Green Energy

FORMER CBO DIRECTOR WARNS CONGRESS THE WORST HITS TO MEDICARE ADVANTAGE ARE COMING

From Pajamas Media:

WASHINGTON – House lawmakers clashed this month over whether cuts to a Medicare program under the Affordable Care Act could lead to higher costs and lower enrollment.

The Medicare Advantage (MA) program, an alternative to the original Medicare fee-for-service program, provides healthcare coverage to Medicare beneficiaries through private health plans offered by organizations under contract with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The program offers more benefits than traditional Medicare and requires less cost sharing, but is more expensive for the government, which pays more per beneficiary. More than a quarter of Medicare users are enrolled in the program.

The ACA cuts $716 billion from Medicare over the next decade, with more than $200 billion coming from MA plans, according to some estimates.

Republicans at a subcommittee hearing criticized the scale-down of Advantage provider networks as proof that President Obama misled the country when he promised that people who liked their health coverage could keep it.

“Empty promises may be of little concern to some, but they have real consequence for the Americans who expect us to do no harm,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“Americans deserve to know why their existing coverage is changing when they were promised otherwise.”

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), vice chairman of the Health Subcommittee, suggested that the healthcare law never would have passed if Obama had been honest with the public about the changes it would unleash.

“The president has sold the Affordable Care Act on a raft of false promises,” Burgess said. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that Advantage customers will have an average of 18 plans to choose from for 2014 coverage. That number is down from an average of 20 choices in 2013.

“It’s clear the Medicaid Advantage program is under attack and these beneficiaries are beginning to feel the effect of more than $300 billion in direct and indirect cuts under Obamacare,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), a physician, said.

“Individuals are losing coverage that they are happy with and the doctors with whom they are comfortable with, and this is a tragedy.” Witnesses testifying before the subcommittee presented completely different views of the state of the MA program under the ACA.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum and former Congressional Budget Office director, said the MA cuts are already having a negative impact on enrollment and plan choices. He said low-income seniors in rural areas without other options for supplemental Medicare coverage will be the most hurt by the cuts.

“Much of [MA's] value is based on the plans’ ability to innovate and offer needed additional benefits, both of which are compromised in the face of large payment rate cuts,” he said.

The cuts to MA will worsen the program over time, he argued, not only resulting in fewer plan choices and higher cost to beneficiaries, but in foregone benefits and smaller provider networks. “To judge it by 2013 or 2014 is a mistake,” Holtz-Eakin said. “It is the trajectory over the foreseeable future that concerns me the most.”

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