Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, Medicare Advantage.

The last year, the Wall Street Journal has been investigating the program.

It was originally created to make health care for seniors and the disabled more efficient.

The idea was to outsource insurance to private companies to save taxpayer dollars

and avoid providers gaming the system as they had in the traditional Medicare program.

You know, some of those good intentions perhaps did not foresee the way that companies and individuals

would respond to the financial incentives that they'd been created.

Christopher Weaver was part of the team of reporters

who looked at the issue.

He joined me to discuss his findings

and the future of Medicare

and the Medicare Advantage program. Chris, can you explain for us the Medicare Advantage program and why it was created?

Sure.

The way traditional Medicare works is that the government pays for health care directly for

seniors and disabled people. And that means, you know, if you go see a doctor or get a lab test,

the government will basically send a check to the doctor or the lab and pay for the service.

And the issue that arose from that

system is that that meant that medical providers had an incentive to do more stuff, you know,

more lab tests, more doctors visits, more perhaps surgeries even. And that led to costs rising

rapidly over generations since the program was created in the 1960s.

And the idea of Medicare Advantage kind of sprang from a desire to do something about

what was perceived as kind of runaway costs in the traditional Medicare system.

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