Medicare Advantage & The Truth About the Obama Administration’s Bait-and-Switch Tactics

Despite today’s misleading claims by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that Medicare Advantage (MA) “remains strong,” the facts tell a different story. Take a look:

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) only 4 percent of the MA cuts from the $2.6 trillion health spending law have taken effect so far.

The Obama Administration spent $8.3 billion on an unprecedented and legally dubious, according to the GAO,  demonstration program that conveniently ends in 2013.  The Wall Street Journal called such action, “…purely political—to give a program that is popular with seniors a temporary reprieve past Election Day.”

Another report from GAO, in April, raised serious questions about whether the Administration’s demonstration program was constructed for political purposes. The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, called it unacceptable saying, “The Obama Administration seems to be using a technicality to side step Congress and write itself a blank check to spend more money for political purposes leading into this year’s elections.”

CBO has projected that the Medicare Advantage program will be cut by $308 billion over the next 10 years, alone.  

The Obama Administration’s own actuary predicts that once the MA cuts are fully phased in, the number of seniors with a Medicare Advantage plan will be reduced by half.

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