This week on CounterSpin: Headlined “The Cash Monster Was Insatiable,” a 2022 New York Times piece reported insurance companies gaming Medicare Advantage, presented as a “low-cost” alternative to traditional Medicare. Some companies cherry-picked healthier seniors for enrollment with cynical tricks like locating their offices up flights of stairs. Such maneuvers don’t lead to good health outcomes, but they serve the real goal: netting private insurers more money. We hear from David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and co-author of this new analysis of Medicare Advantage. Tauhid Chappell has tracked the issue for years now; he teaches the country’s first graduate-level course on equity movements in the cannabis industry, at Thomas Jefferson University.