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To the Editor:
My sister recently received a letter from her doctor that asked if she would accept “care coordination” that would benefit her from a Direct Contracting Entity or DCE. You might receive a letter like this, also. What is DCE? Rather than paying doctors directly, Medicare would pay a third-party middleman or DCE that can keep up to 40 percent for overhead and profit for the “coordination” neither my sister or her doctor need. If you receive a letter like this, you can call Medicare and decline and they will withdraw you from participation. If you accept the offer and choose to withdraw later, you would have to change doctors. Medicare is a definite public good and would be even better with simplification and transparency, but this and other efforts to further privatize Medicare would divert resources from patients immediately, from providers eventually, and at greater cost to us all.

Norma Morrison
Carter County