Insurance Companies Are Trying Desperately to Stop Medicare Expansion in the Budget Reconciliation
The health insurance industry is spending big to halt efforts to expand Medicare benefits — and running false ads claiming Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are protecting seniors rather than privatizing Medicare.
Major insurers including UnitedHealth Group have announced new expansions into Medicare Advantage. (Tiffany Hagler-Geard / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As Medicare Advantage continues to drive profits for the nation’s major health insurance companies, the industry is lobbying against a provision in the reconciliation bill that could save the government nearly $150 billion over the next decade on a much-needed expansion of the country’s Medicare program and prevent even more money from being funneled to private health insurance companies.
Medicare Advantage — the privatized version of the national health insurance program for people over the age of sixty-five and people with disability status — has become a cash cow for private health insurers. As small- and medium-sized employers struggle to keep up with the skyrocketing costs of health care, private insurers are increasingly expanding into the Medicare Advantage market to buffer their profits.
A provision being considered as part of the reconciliation bill would add dental, vision, and hearing benefits to Medicare without including those benefits in the calculation of the rate at which the federal government reimburses Medicare Advantage plans. Doing so could cut the cost of expanding Medicare benefits by 41 percent, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution.
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