UHC Proposes Joint Medicare/Medicaid Program

This makes senses:

UnitedHealth Group Inc. is proposing a managed-care plan for dual recipients of Medicare and Medicaid. The insurer said the plan would "save as much as $1.62 trillion in the U.S. over 25 years," Bloomberg reports. "Almost 9 million Americans receive coverage from both Medicare, the U.S. health plan for the elderly and disabled, and the Medicaid program for the poor. UnitedHealth proposed in a report today to combine benefits of the programs into a single plan to better coordinate patient care. ... Such a change would increase the number of government beneficiaries on UnitedHealth's rolls, [Simon Stevens, executive vice president of UnitedHealth] said, without providing a specific estimate. ... The current payment structure creates a 'tangled web of responsibilities between Medicaid and Medicare' because each program covers different expenses, medical providers must bill separate programs, and no one is accountable for tracking the care patients receive or how much is spent, UnitedHealth said in its report. Providing Medicare and Medicaid benefits through a single insurance plan would simplify coordination of care among doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and other providers and would save money by eliminating inefficiencies, the report says"