It’s unusual for me to begin with a disclaimer, but I don’t consider myself an expert on Medicare Advantage (MA) plans or how well they work with other health issues. However, a published – and courageous – article in the “Journal of Clinical Oncology,” entitled “Medicare Advantage: A Disadvantage for Complex Cancer Surgery Patients,” reveals studies of about 70,000 surgeries, and the results aren’t pretty. It has been clearly established that complicated cancer surgeries in elderly patients can be done with considerable success in high volume centers. The MA beneficiaries did reasonably well with colectomies (colon cancer), but not in the other categories.
Patients with cancer enrolled in MA were 1.5 times more likely to die within one month after surgical removal of their stomach or liver and twice as likely to die within one month after pancreas surgery for pancreas cancer. All of these findings were statistically significant.
After reading this, I can see why many consumers don’t know who they can trust.
