>Medicare ... will give them a blank check with tax payer money? Whoever gave you that idea, you should stop listening to them. Medicare payments are subject

>Medicare ... will give them a blank check with tax payer money? Whoever gave you that idea, you should stop listening to them. Medicare payments are subject to a medicare fee schedule, which is typically much lower than a traditional private enterprise's fee schedule. What that means is medicare gets billed a lot less than a regular patient with insurance. https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/ https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-... "Private insurers paid nearly double Medicare rates for all hospital services (199% of Medicare rates, on average), ranging from 141% to 259% of Medicare rates across the reviewed studies." "The difference between private and Medicare rates was greater for outpatient than inpatient hospital services, which averaged 264% and 189% of Medicare rates overall, respectively." "For physician services, private insurance paid 143% of Medicare rates, on average, ranging from 118% to 179% of Medicare rates across studies."