{"id":14520,"date":"2024-01-24T13:46:20","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T13:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/24\/biden-admin-threatening-your-medicare-advantage-plan-heres-what-theyre-not-telling-you\/"},"modified":"2024-01-24T13:46:20","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T13:46:20","slug":"biden-admin-threatening-your-medicare-advantage-plan-heres-what-theyre-not-telling-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/24\/biden-admin-threatening-your-medicare-advantage-plan-heres-what-theyre-not-telling-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden admin threatening your Medicare Advantage plan. Here\u2019s what they\u2019re not telling you"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s January, and with a new year comes a fresh threat to both taxpayers and seniors: Further cuts to Medicare Advantage, courtesy of the Biden administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This could occur soon, as the Centers\u00a0for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will release a boring-sounding \u2018rate notice\u2019 relating to Medicare Advantage in the coming weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Medicare Advantage plans are well-liked private insurance options that stand out from traditional Medicare because they can set payment methods and levels and reject certain providers. This flexibility has enabled Medicare Advantage plans to increase their value, providing better coverage and outcomes than traditional Medicare.<\/p>\n

Depending on what CMS does, they could further incentivize seniors to move away from Medicare Advantage plans and toward traditional Medicare fee-for-service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Studies show that\u00a0Medicare Advantage greatly aids overall Medicare solvency\u00a0and\u00a0delivers better value for taxpayers, consumers and seniors. So what happens in the coming weeks could matter a lot to you, your older relatives and friends, and even your kids and grandkids, who will someday bear the cost of paying for entitlements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A lot of people missed last year\u2019s stealthy cuts to Medicare Advantage. And for good reason. The government worked hard to keep the cuts on the down low.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The first troubling trick was CMS touting a growth rate for Medicare Advantage of 2.28%, which sounds like an\u00a0increase,\u00a0not a cut. But at the time, the country was still experiencing higher than the typical 3% inflation or more, the Congressional Budget Office\u00a0was projecting\u00a0a roughly 10% increase in Medicare costs, and Medicare\u2019s Trustees\u00a0projected\u00a0annual growth in Medicare per enrollee spending to be 5.4%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, this growth rate didn\u2019t keep up with rising costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg\u2019s former employer, McKinsey, calculated the changes as amounting to a \u20181.12% effective MA rate decrease.\u2019 This sly cut was accomplished via a make-your-eyes-glaze-over round of bureaucratic decision-making, amounting to the first post-ObamaCare cuts, yet sold as \u2018reform.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

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That second and third slick trick \u2013 boring the public to tears and throwing out the word \u2018reform\u2019 \u2013 insulated them from criticism you\u2019d usually expect from, well, almost everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just last year\u2019s cuts that made Medicare Advantage look vastly less appealing than traditional pricey \u2013 and insolvency-risking \u2013 Medicare. CMS also eliminated\u00a02,000 diagnosis codes, which meant less coverage for seniors in Medicare Advantage plans than conventional Medicare fee-for-service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CMS also instituted an absurd\u00a048-hour\u00a0mandatory waiting period for seniors hoping to chat with agents or brokers to discuss insurance options.<\/p>\n

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Then CMS famously messed around with Medicare Advantage\u2019s star rating program. Insurers say the changes made it incredibly difficult for plans to receive high star ratings. It also appears these changes could\u00a0squeeze\u00a0$600 million to $700 million out of\u00a0Medicare Advantage in 2025. All of this makes Medicare Advantage less appealing to seniors, which is a bad deal for the rest of us as\u00a0taxpayers\u00a0and\u00a0future retirees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now we have to wait and see if CMS bureaucrats try to make Medicare Advantage even less attractive again this year through additional cuts and more confusing rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if they do, will anyone call them out?<\/p>\n

Despite their concern about the massive national debt, the size of the deficit and the role traditional entitlements play in those issues,\u00a0many of my fellow Republicans were shockingly quiet about the attacks on Medicare Advantage last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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This is odd because when Barack Obama was president, basically every GOP elected official, candidate and grassroots activist screamed to the heavens about ObamaCare\u2019s Medicare cuts, effected through slashing Medicare Advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We should be screaming once again. With conservatives likely to be hammered this election year for supposedly wanting to cut entitlements, we should be setting the record straight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Biden administration, not Republicans, which is cutting Medicare Advantage benefits and threatening high-quality health care for seniors while making the debt even bigger in the process.<\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s January, and with a new year comes a fresh threat to both taxpayers and seniors: Further cuts to Medicare Advantage, courtesy of the Biden administration.\u00a0 This could occur soon, as the Centers\u00a0for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will release a boring-sounding \u2018rate notice\u2019 relating to Medicare Advantage in the coming weeks.\u00a0 Medicare Advantage plans <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}