**2.3 Privatization of public programs**

Insurers have increasingly privatized Medicare and Medicaid in recent years as ways to exploit federal funding sources. Their claims that privatization would be more efficient have been proven false by experience. Instead, they have been more restrictive in choice and coverage, increased their administrative overhead to five or six times higher than traditional Medicare, and left markets that were insufficiently profitable. They have also increased their revenues by up-coding diagnoses—claiming payment for conditions for which care was not provided [8]. **Table 1** shows marked differences between privatized Medicare and traditional public Medicare by the early 2000s [9].
