A variety of labor and advocacy organizations are asking Congress to enact reforms in the Medicare Advantage program, contending that the current payment system provides excessive tax subsidies to the insurance companies in the program.
The groups co-signed a letter to Congress earlier this week. The letter also asked lawmakers to put restraints on aggressive and deceptive marketing of the plans.
Groups signing the letter include the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the Campaign for America's Future, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Families USA, the Medicare Rights Center, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, OWL-The Voice of Midlife and Older Women and USAction.
"We are eager to work with leaders of both parties to enact sensible, fiscally responsible Medicare Advantage reforms this year," the letter stated. "People with Medicare deserve protection against predatory marketing practices. Taxpayers and Medicare beneficiaries alike deserve a Congress that safeguards the future of Medicare."
Medicare Advantage Plans are a health plan option that generally covers all a beneficiary's health needs. However, while the plans provide additional benefits and lower copayments, they typically restrict choices of physicians and hospitals.
Plans offering Medicare Advantage to beneficiaries have come under increasing scrutiny because of concerns about high-pressure sales tactics and misinformation supplied to beneficiaries during sales encounters. At one point last summer, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services barred seven companies from marketing the private fee-for-service plans because of questionable sales tactics. In late February, a Congressional panel questioned whether sales agents were ethical in handling their responsibilities.
The groups said the release of the April 7 letter was timed to coincide with a scheduled announcement by CMS of the minimum payment benchmarks for local Medicare Advantage plans in 2009. On that day, CMS announced it would raise payments for Medicare Advantage plans by 3.6 percent. That compares with a 3.5 percent increase last year for the plans, but the increase is slightly lower than the estimated 3.7 percent expected increase for Medicare in 2009.
"The continuing overpayments to Medicare private health plans, which now average 13 percent more per enrollee than original Medicare, is evidence of Congress's continuing failure to serve as a steward of Medicare," said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center.
"There is still time in 2008 for Congress to begin to level the playing field between private plans and original Medicare and to put an endd to the marketing abuse that is fueled by these excessive corporate subsidies," Hayes added.