Insurers Campaign to Reverse Medicare Cuts

The health insurance industry is readying a “ferocious lobbying offensive” to block a 2.2 percent cut of Medicare Advantage plans, according to the inside-the-Beltway blog The Hill.

In addition to intensive lobbying of lawmakers, private payers have joined together to begin running television ads in Washington, D.C., and then expanding into markets where Medicare Advantage plans are popular.

“Seniors will pay more, get less and lose choices,” the ad’s narrator intones, according to The Hill. “Seniors in Medicare Advantage got hit hard by health reform. The sequester piled on more cuts. Now, the Medicare agency is proposing deep, new payment cuts. It’s too much.”

Unlike the sequester cut of 2 percent which originally had been passed by Congress, the Medicare Advantage cut was proposed by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a regulatory change and will take effect in April.