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Amazon launches a low-cost version of Prime for Medicaid recipients
Amazon announced this morning it will offer a low-cost version of its Prime membership program to qualifying recipients of Medicaid. The program will bring the cost of Prime down from the usual $10.99 per month to about half that, at $5.99 per month, while still offering the full range of Prime perks, including free, two-day shipping on millions of products, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, Prime Reading, Prime Now, Audible Channels, and more.
The new program is an expansion on Amazon's discounted Prime service for customers on government assistance, launched in June 2017. For the same price of $5.99 per month, Amazon offers Prime memberships to any U.S. customer with a valid EBT card – the card that's used to disburse funds for assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC).
It could be a way to get users with certain health care requirements on board before Amazon launches its own health insurance company.
Also at USA Today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:14PM
It's hard to get a clean breakdown, but from my perspective what I see is:
$10K per capita going into Medicare/caid programs.
$1K per capita going to top level GAO (general accounting overhead) - oversight, audits, program reviews, anti-fraud task forces, etc.
$2K per capita going to bottom level GAO - application processing, eligibility review, ongoing review of eligibility status, bureaucratic offices filled with surly and willfully ignorant agents who are pretty much the opposite of Bob Parr [youtube.com], payee eligibility reviews, anti-fraud audits, etc.
Actual fraud is hard to gauge, but I think the system is running at a pretty optimal balance where they spend just about as much preventing fraud as the remaining fraud in the system, call it $500 per capita.
So, hey, that's not so bad: $6500 per capita going toward actual healthcare, right? And, it's not as if the $3500 per capita is wasted, all those bureaucrats have jobs, participate in the local economy, etc. Hell, even the fraudsters are out there buying luxury goods... it's still beneficial to the economy.
But, as GreatAuntAnesthesia pointed out, that's $6500 feeding the PRICE of healthcare side of the machine, not the COST, so slice another 50%+ off of _that_ to feed the GAO, profit centers, and fraud in the insurance and reimbursement layers of the system.
My mother in law is in Assisted Living, and one aspect of her Assisted Living program is a Medicaid eligible $19/day fee for, basically, someone to look in on her every 2 hours. On paper, they are supposed to be assisting with bathing and other activities of daily life, but in reality they give her her pills once a day and are otherwise "on call" incase she falls or something (which has happened more than once...) For a big assisted living facility with maybe 120 residents, there are usually about 2 LPNs on staff who provide this $19 per day service to all 100+ residents, plus other things too. 3 shifts, 6 LPNs generating $1900+ per day of income for the facility whether through private pay or medicaid. The LPNs don't get $40 per hour, they get more like $20/hr, the rest seems to get sucked up into GAO.
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