<\/p>\n
\nThe Obama administration\u2019s proposed cuts<\/a> to Medicare Advantage plans \u2014 the private insurance plans that cover almost 30 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries \u2014 are fair and reasonable. As it happens, they are also mandated by law. Yet Republicans, sensing a campaign issue, are telling older and disabled Americans that the administration is \u201craiding Medicare Advantage to pay for Obamacare.\u201d The health insurance industry, for its part, is warning that enrollees will suffer higher premiums, lower benefits and fewer choices among doctors if the cuts go into force. <\/p>\n
Some of this could in fact happen, although the industry has cried wolf before and continues to thrive. But the key point is this: Over the past decade, enrollees in Medicare Advantage have received lots of extra benefits, thanks to unjustified federal subsidies to the insurance companies. Now they will have to do with somewhat less, unless the insurers are willing to absorb the cuts while maintaining benefits. Enrollment in these private plans, offered by companies like UnitedHealth and Humana, has more than doubled since 2006, in part because of lower premiums and extra benefits, like gym memberships, that are not included in traditional fee-for-service Medicare. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Fear Mongering With Medicare – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Obama administration\u2019s proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage plans \u2014 the private insurance plans that cover almost 30 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries \u2014 are fair and reasonable. As … Continue reading “Fear Mongering With Medicare – NYTimes.com”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,53,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicare","category-medicare-advantage","category-right-wing-noise-machine"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}