The Democrats Still Don’t Like HMOs

Obama, Reid take dead aim at Medicare HMOs

By Jeffrey Young

Posted: 01/14/09 07:00 PM [ET]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had no qualms expressing his low opinion of private health insurance plans in Medicare.

“Medicare Advantage is gone,” Reid said last week during an interview with The Hill.

He didn’t mean that literally, his press office later clarified. But Reid, like his fellow congressional Democrats and President-elect Obama, wants to scale back the program through which HMOs and other health plans provide benefits to more than 10 million people, or almost one-fourth of the 45 million people on Medicare.

Likewise, Obama singled out Medicare Advantage as an example of “programs that don’t work” during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday.