> Many private [Medicare] plans require no additional monthly premiums, yet the government pays an average of $849.90 in monthly subsidies to insurance companie

> Many private [Medicare] plans require no additional monthly premiums, yet the government pays an average of $849.90 in monthly subsidies to insurance companies for a person on Medicare Advantage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation That might be a reasonable comparison if Medicare's claims rates were self-sustaining, but they're not. As I explained in another comment on this thread, private insurers subsidize Original Medicare with their own payouts in claims, and that comes out a few orders of magnitude larger than 14% per Original Medicare patient.