With midterms looming, Obama administration caves on Medicare Advantage cuts
By Paul Waldman, WashPost, Updated: April 8 at 12:08 pm
Democrats may be feeling better about the politics of the Affordable Care Act, but the legislation is complex enough that political dangers lurk around every corner, and constant vigilance is required to forestall the next attack. So the administration has announced that the cuts to Medicare Advantage that were scheduled to take place starting next year will not go forward; instead, the program will actually get an increase in payments.
The conflict over Medicare Advantage provides a revealing microcosm of not just health care in general but the broad divide between the parties, on both policy and politics.
First, some background. Conservatives fought against Medicare’s creation in 1965, and always believed that as a big-government, single-payer insurance program, it was doomed by its very nature to provide terrible service at inflated prices. Yet the program is not just efficient (Medicare spends far less on non-medical costs, i.e. bureaucracy, than private insurers), it’s spectacularly popular with its beneficiaries. So every election season, Republicans find themselves accusing opponents of being insufficiently protective of a program that embodies everything they despise about government.
Between elections, they’ve often tried to find ways to privatize the program, if not completely, than in little ways here and there. One of these was Medicare Advantage, which has been around in some form and under different names for a few decades, but took off in the late 1990s; today, over a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in an MA plan. A private insurance company, rather than the federal government, administers Medicare benefits. The argument in creating and expanding the program was that because the private sector does everything better than government, insurance companies will naturally provide better service and save money if they administer the benefits.
(More here.)
Democrats may be feeling better about the politics of the Affordable Care Act, but the legislation is complex enough that political dangers lurk around every corner, and constant vigilance is required to forestall the next attack. So the administration has announced that the cuts to Medicare Advantage that were scheduled to take place starting next year will not go forward; instead, the program will actually get an increase in payments.
The conflict over Medicare Advantage provides a revealing microcosm of not just health care in general but the broad divide between the parties, on both policy and politics.
First, some background. Conservatives fought against Medicare’s creation in 1965, and always believed that as a big-government, single-payer insurance program, it was doomed by its very nature to provide terrible service at inflated prices. Yet the program is not just efficient (Medicare spends far less on non-medical costs, i.e. bureaucracy, than private insurers), it’s spectacularly popular with its beneficiaries. So every election season, Republicans find themselves accusing opponents of being insufficiently protective of a program that embodies everything they despise about government.
Between elections, they’ve often tried to find ways to privatize the program, if not completely, than in little ways here and there. One of these was Medicare Advantage, which has been around in some form and under different names for a few decades, but took off in the late 1990s; today, over a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in an MA plan. A private insurance company, rather than the federal government, administers Medicare benefits. The argument in creating and expanding the program was that because the private sector does everything better than government, insurance companies will naturally provide better service and save money if they administer the benefits.
(More here.)
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