Maybe a policy expert can explain how "Total Health" is different from the existing Medicare Advantage?

Also, from Kaiser Health:

www.kff.org/medicare/upload/2052-16.pdf

Over the past decades, Medicare payment policy for plans has shifted from one that produced savings to one that focused more on expanding access to private plans and providing extra benefits to Medicare private plan enrollees. These policy changes resulted in Medicare paying private plans more per enrollee than the cost of care for beneficiaries in traditional Medicare, on average (MedPAC 2010). The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 produced another shift in payment policy by reducing federal payments to Medicare Advantage plans over time, bringing them closer to the average costs of care under the traditional Medicare program. It also provided for new bonus payments to plans based on quality ratings, beginning in 2012, and required plans beginning in 2014 to maintain a medical loss ratio of at least 85%, restricting the share of premiums that Medicare Advantage plans can use for administrative expenses and profits.

(Emphasis added.)

NPR interviewed a freshman Republican Congressman from Illinois this morning who said one of the best things to get America back on its feet again would be to invest in rebuilding infrastructure, just as Mr. Obama has tried to do.

Then it hit me, Corker knows what Obama is doing wrong. He could issue all us old folks picks and shovels and put our wrinkled old butts out on road gangs to earn that vast wealth we're siphoning off Social Security and Medicare.

In one of Pat Paulsen's many runs for president, he once said the last candidate who ran against him (and won) had promised to 'take care of all the old folks'. Now here we were four years later and he had broken that promise. We had more old folks than we ever had.

Corker's plan could solve that problem.

That's rich, coming from a guy who will never need Medicare, and probably doesn't know anybody who will.

The shame is that our neighbors elected this clown. I am interested in exactly who it is writing this stuff and briefing Corker on it. It's pretty evident he's not exactly an intellectual heavyweight nor a policy wonk. :-)