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Heritage Foundation
GOP
Governors Hit Obama
Administration on Medicare Advantage Rates
Marguerite Bowling
April 16, 2014
Three Republican governors
yesterday blasted President Barack Obama over changes to next year’s
Medicare Advantage rates, writing in a letter that the Obama
administration’s recent rate announcement was “little more than
political theater.”
While the administration
says Medicare Advantage plans will get a slight pay bump next year,
Govs. Rick Perry (Texas), Rick Scott (Fla.), and Bobby Jindal (La.)
charge that insurance analysts still anticipate plan rates to drop as
much as 3.5 percent. “This is on top of a 6 percent cut to fiscal
year 2014 payments,” the governors wrote. “Collectively, these
cuts will significantly harm America’s seniors.”
The Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, the federal agency in charge of Medicare,
announced last week that 2015 reimbursement rates would increase by
.4 percent for Medicare Advantage, the private plans that offer the
Medicare benefit.
That announcement reversed
course on planned cuts to Medicare Advantage—which provides
coverage to roughly 30 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries—that
are in part caused by reductions included in the Affordable Care Act,
or Obamacare.
If those cuts had gone into
place, consulting firm Oliver Wyman, commissioned by the insurer
trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, estimated seniors
would have faced premium increases and benefit reductions of $35 to
$75 per month, or $420 to $900 next year.
The governors called on CMS
to work with Congress to prevent any plan cuts, but health policy
analyst Alyene Senger said the new 2015 rate is a “short-lived
pardon” for the Medicare Advantage program.
“We’ve seen this
scenario play out before because of political pressure,” said
Senger, a research associate with The Heritage Foundation. “Medicare
Advantage escapes the administration’s knife this time but it’s
still in danger of being on the chopping block in future years.”
This story was produced by
The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as
necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Read this and other
articles with links and photos at the Heritage Foundation
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