I suppose the takeover of Family Care Network was inevitable, given the steady march nationwide to privatize Medicare: A few years ago, PeaceHealth placed their Traditional Medicare patients into the PeaceHealth version of an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) called the Cascadia Community Care Alliance.  More recently, Washington state became one of six states to be placed in a special study in which certain Medicare procedures and services are reviewed for cost effectivness by a private entity before being authorized. This version of management is called the WISeR model and mimics an ACO.

For those who may have forgotten the nature of an ACO, I refer you to an article I wrote four years ago, Medicare Direct Contracting Scam Renamed ACO REACH. When an ACO takes over, it grabs the medical records of Traditional Medicare beneficiaries and monetizes them with the cooperation of the Center for Medicare Services (CMS). Once the ACO takes over managment of your care, it makes its money by increasing the difference between what it receives from the Medicare Trust Fund, and what it needs to spend on the actual treatment and services you get as a Medicare member. This is done by second-guessing your physician on treatments, for instance, requiring prior-authorization and/or disallowing certain services in favor of lower cost options that are potentially detrimental to you. With an ACO, the motive is changed: from prioritizing your health care outcomes, into cost savings on the part of the ACO, and they get to pocket the difference. Doctors are then forced to spend time battling these monetized ACO decisions which ultimately, and severely, affects the treatment they provide their patients and their own mental state to the point of what is called moral injury, a condition that is often seen with combat veterans.  

FCN patients who were under Traditional Medicare have been subsumed into Northwest Momentum Health Partners and are now participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) that originally birthed the Rosemary's Babies known as ACOs. This march toward privatization was a gift from our former President Barack "Rope-a-Dope-Hope" Obama with his Affordable Care Act. He was preceded by George "Mission Accomplished" Bush who gifted us the risibly called Medicare Advantage into which over 50% of Medicare beneficiaries are now enrolled, and which has facilitated the transfer of billions of Medicare dollars into private insurance coffers. Joe Biden slept through it all.

And Beat Goes On as Sonny and Cher once sang "...drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain..."   Pri-va-tize, there's money to be made...la-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-da……….