Commonwealth Report: Profit-driven Medicare Advantage Cuts

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1:00Profit driven Medicare Advantage cuts. Why single pair is in dead? A hundred seven dollar oil and soaring rates. Armed ice at the poles. The Supreme Court blocks the Missouri map and the Navy's Bahrain admission. Good day. This is the Commonwealth Report news for the public, not the powerful. You can follow us at Commonwealth Report.News and get this in your inbox every day. Why are insurance giants dumping a million seniors? Two of the biggest Medicare Advantage insurers in America are getting ready to push more than a million seniors off their plans. Not because those seniors did anything wrong because they aren't profitable enough. Emanus chief financial officer told Wall Street the company is walking away from plans covering roughly 600,000 members to in her words drive the intended margin expansion. The goal is a profit margin of at least 3% by 2028. United Healthcare, the largest Medicare Advantage insurer in the country, is doing the same thing. Healthcare dive reports it expects to end this year with up to 1.1 million fewer members

2:04that it had last year. It pulled out of 109 counties, cut allowances for over-the-counter health items, pushed people into plans with skimpy or doctor networks, and rewired broker commissions to steer seniors into whatever makes the company the most money. These seniors now get to scramble through open enrollment next month or fall back to traditional Medicare. Here's the thing, taxpayers, us taxpayers handed these private plans more than $534 billion last year. That's our money. And the moment a grandmother in a rural county stops penciling out on a spreadsheet, she's gone. And we call this healthcare. Looks more like a profit machine wearing a Medicare, wearing Medicare's name. Is Medicare for all closer than you think? Here's a counterpoint to that story. When it comes to Nancy Altman, president of Social Security works in author of the new book, The Road to Medicare for all. Writing at Common Dreams today, she argues the pessimists have it all wrong. Yes, on the surface things look grim, insurers dumping seniors, Republicans running Congress,

3:05Trump in the White House. But Altman says that view quotes, sees only the waves at the surface. Underneath, she says the ground is shifting. Polls show most Americans believe healthcare should be guaranteed. The fury that erupted after the killing of United Health Care's CEO in 2024 wasn't about one man. It was millions of people telling stories of loved ones who died because a company said, no, in National Nurses United, the country's largest nurses union is organizing for single payer nationwide. Bernie Sanders Medicare for all bill has more co-sponsors than it did in the last Congress. And the insurers make Altman's case every time they dump a senior for profit. Her message is simple. This won't happen without a fight, but it's a fight we can win. We're not behind the rest of the world because we can't do this. We're behind because a few people get rich keeping it this way. Oil hits $107 as Trump's war sends borrowing costs, soaring. The bill for Trump's war with Iran just landed on your kitchen table.

4:05Oil jumped 6% Thursday to more than $107 a barrel after Houthi rebels advanced along Yemen's Red Sea coast, raising fears they could choke off Saudi or crude exports. That sent investors around the world dumping government bonds. The yield on the 10 year treasury shot up to 4.92% the highest since 2023. The 30 year hit its highest levels since 2007. That's your mortgage rate, your car loan, and your credit card. The European Central Bank raised rates Thursday with Christine Lagarde warning that inflation will last longer than expected. Trump suggested on Wednesday the war could go on until immediately after the midterm elections and then he claims oil prices will come tumbling down. He's timing a war to an election. Meanwhile, he's promising a $5,000 check to every adult if Republicans win in November. One reason bond traders are panicking about runaway borrowing. The Fed means next week under Trump's handpicked chair, Kevin Warsh, and markets expect a

5:05rate hike. Not the cut, the Trumps keeps demanding. Picking people pay for this war twice, wants at the pump and wants at the bank. Will armed ICE agents be waiting at your polling place? A coalition of civil rights groups in the city of Denver went to federal court Thursday to stop Donald Trump from putting armed ICE agents inside polling places this November. Unidaw's U.S. common cause and the League of United Latin American citizens filed the suit with the legal group democracy forward. It asks the federal judge in Washington to declare that stationing armed federal agents at the polls is illegal. Federal law makes it a felony to send armed men to any place where an election is held unless they're needed to repel armed enemies of the United States. Homeland Security Secretary and former plumber Mark Wayne Mullin said this month that ICE officers will be allowed into polling places to serve warrants or respond to a threat. Steve Bannon put it more bluntly on his podcast.

6:06We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. The suit points out ICE has unlawfully detained more than 170 U.S. citizens and killed at least three since Trump took office. Janet Margua of Unidaw's U.S. says this isn't immigration enforcement. It's voter suppression, plain and simple. Non-citizens already can't vote in federal elections. So this was never about immigration. Armed men at the polls is what dictators do. Our courts need to say so before early voting starts. The Supreme Court slams the door on Trump's Missouri-Jerrymander. For the second time in one week, the United States Supreme Court told Missouri Republicans no. On Thursday, the Justice is blocked a federal judge order that would have forced the state to use a Trump-backed congressional map this November. No dissents. The map was drawn last year at Trump's urging to carve up Kansas City and take out Democratic Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, giving Republicans seven of the state's eight house seats. But voters fought back. A group called People Not Politicians gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures for a

7:10referendum to put the map on the ballot. Under Missouri law, that freezes the new map until the people vote. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins sat on those signatures from December until August, then rejected them on primary day. In Missouri Supreme Court, unanimously ruled he had no right to do that. And a Trump-appointed federal judge tried to override the state court on Tuesday, Hoskins ordered local officials to use the jury-mander anyway. So the state's highest court hauled him in for a contempt hearing today. Thursday morning. And now the 2022 map stands and ballots go out on September 19. Missouri voters beat a rigged map with clipboards and signatures. That's what democracy looks like when people refuse to give it up. What did the Navy chief just admit about Bahrain? Sometimes the truth slips out when nobody's watching. Acting Navy secretary, Hong Chao, gave an interview to the conservative epoch times in the reporter previewed at Thursday on social media. Kyle said, Iranian forces quote, blew the hell out of Bahrain.

8:12That's the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet. For months, the Pentagon insisted Iranian strikes on the base didn't significantly affect operations. And it refused to tell Congress what the damage cost. When Whiskey Pete was pressed for a number at a May hearing, he answered with a question of his own, asking what the cost of a ran getting a nuclear weapon would be. The Wall Street Journal has reported some structures on the base were hit so badly they may never be rebuilt. Fox News' own Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin called Kyle's remark a stunning admission and said no senior official had acknowledged it on the record until now. A war most Americans oppose, a president who says it might last until right after the election. And a Pentagon that hides the damage to our own basis from the people who pay for them. If they'll stone, we're all Congress about a Navy base. Ask yourself what else they're not telling you. And that's the way it is that a Thursday, September 10th, 2026, I'm Tom Hartman.