Several reports out today will take aim at Medicare Advantage, the insurance industry-run health maintenance plan option created in 2003 for the nation's senior citizen health care program. According to a brief summary of the study in today's New York Times:

Payments to health maintenance organizations are, on average, 12 percent higher than what the government would spend for beneficiaries in traditional Medicare, while payments to private fee-for-service (Medicare Advantage) plans were 17 percent higher.

The reports also say that the "coordinated care" promised by the plans hasn't materialized. The idea was that better coordination of care for seniors with a number of chronic diseases would lower overall costs. However, it is the privately managed "fee for service" plans, which mimic traditional Medicare, that have been growing fastest -- not the managed care plans.

Look for Congress and the incoming Obama administration to eliminate Medicare Advantage and use the money to sustain current levels of pay for physicians. That bill may also begin redressing the growing disparity between primary care and specialist physicians, although that will be tougher to accomplish because of opposition from the radiology, oncology and surgical guilds.