According to a RedState report, Republicans favor choice and are resisting the Biden administration’s efforts to “force” consumers to embrace Medicare for All. For the second year in a row, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposes lowering the insurer reimbursement rate for Medicare Advantage, knowing it will increase costs for care providers and insurers.
RedState asserted that Chiquita Brooks-Lasure at the CMS was strategically “gutting the popular Medicare Advantage program” to push Americans toward “Medicare for All.”
According to a report in Buckeye Briefing, CMS intends to “weaken the popular program and eventually do away with it.”
Medicare for All, known as Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part C, ensures health providers a fixed payment for specific services. Insurers often base their rates based on what Medicare Advantage will pay. Many experts hold that the program benefits enrollees over insurers.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study noted that 48% of Medicare beneficiaries share in the Medicare Advantage program.
The report noted that Dr. Brian Miller, M.D., a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee, said: “MedPAC, an independent, thoughtful policy organization — is being hijacked for partisan political aims, while the organization’s analysis appears to be slanted to arrive at a foregone conclusion, in order to set up political cover for a massive MA rate cut.”
Breitbart reported that House Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern (R-OK) said, “President Joe Biden’s move to cut Medicare Advantage is the “first step” towards Medicare for All.”
Hern said of Medicare Advantage: “Public-private partnerships like Medicare Advantage [MA] provide more choices and better benefits for our seniors; we need to look to the successes of programs like MA and replicate these efforts across other government programs.”
“The private sector has always delivered better results,” Hern added.
Axios reported that the Biden administration plans to decrease funding for Medicare Advantage by “at least $4.7 billion” by 2032, reportedly by identifying and recovering overpayments.
The Biden administration finalized an oft-delayed plan to step up audits of Medicare Advantage insurers in order to identify and recover overpayments. https://t.co/y3MjMdqRUq
— Axios (@axios) January 31, 2023
Medicare School holds an opposite view and profiled four major changes to Medicare that progressive members of Congress are trying to enact.
The backlash against the Biden administration’s initiative to eliminate Medicare Advantage is growing. Recently, 62 senators, including Democrats John Fetterman (PA) and Jon Tester (MT) and Independent Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), sent a formal letter urging Biden to support the Medicare Advantage program.
