Posted on 04/07/2014 2:28:01 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
April 07, 2014, 05:15 pm Healthcare cuts canceled after Dem complaints
By Jonathan Easley
The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.
The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.
Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.
Instead, the administration said the federal payments to insurers will increase next year by .40 percent.
The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) on Monday said changes in the healthcare market meant it did not need to make those cuts to Medicare Advantage this year.
It cited an increase in healthy beneficiaries under Medicare, which it said has lowered projected costs for that program.
CMS separately is delaying a risk assessment proposal that was set to take affect under ObamaCare.
The announcement comes after insurers spent millions on a public relations blitz seeking to head off the cuts, and after dozens of Democrats joined Republicans in calling on the administration to keep MA rates flat to avoid cutting benefits for seniors.
Monday’s announcement is “significantly better for health plans” than the initial proposal in February, CMS administrator Jonathan Blum said in a conference call with reporters.
“The policies announced today will provide improved benefits in Medicare Advantage and the Prescription Drug Plans while keeping costs low for Medicare beneficiaries,” Blum said. “We believe that plans will continue their strong participation in the Medicare Advantage program in 2015 and beneficiaries will continue to have access to a wide array of high quality and affordable Medicare health and drug plans.”
America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the nation’s largest health plans industry group, was among the most vocal critics of the proposed cuts, backing ads reminding Washington that “seniors are watching.”
The rates are also a victory for insurers and Republican lawmakers who lobbied hard to ward off any changes to MA payment rates, and for vulnerable Democrats, who flocked en masse to oppose the cuts, even though many of them have opposed the program in the past.
In February, the Obama administration argued that the proposed cuts would help strengthen the program -— an increasingly popular private alternative to traditional Medicare — and guard against waste.
White House officials had pushed back at criticism of the pending cuts, noting that Medicare Advantage’s enrollment has spiked to an all-time high since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and that premiums under the plan have fallen by 10 percent.
Ah, those Demon Rats.....changing crap in an election year....how brave.
Term limits for president ? Don’t worry Obama will fix that also
Obamacare was claimed to be deficit neutral because the spending increases on new subsidies were offset by new taxes and cuts like these. When they start cancelling the cuts, the story about Obamacare being deficit neutral go out the window.
Jean Sheahan is breathing a bit easier right now.
I heard - but only from one source - that these 'Advantage' companies get $100,000 per year per old senior from the government... The number seemed high to me but this source is generally reliable.
We The People “must” clean the DC sewer starting this November.
I heard - but only from one source - that these 'Advantage' companies get $100,000 per year per old senior from the government... The number seemed high to me but this source is generally reliable.
If this number is correct the country is being drained of all wealth...
So they going in the hole $200M and dumping the risk assessment bailout for insurance companies with unbalanced "enrollment". All without Congress. Lawless tyranny.
If they get away with this in an election year, just imagine what they’ll get away with in a non-election year.
This was just a gimmick to make the original Obamacare financial projections look somewhat acceptable.
Everyone involved in the original bill knew the numbers were imaginary and just plucked out of Nancy Pelosi’s keister.
The chickens come home to roost.
Democrat candidates face gale force political headwinds: dissatisfaction in their own ranks, struggling voters live with a dismal economy, belief that Obama is dragging the country in the wrong direction (a surefire losing combination at the polls).
Democrats acknowledge that they need to embrace ObamaCare's positives, even though ACA is seen as a bigger failure now than it was when the party got soundly defeated in 2010.
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INCONVENIENT FACTOIOD When Fla Republican David Jolly defeated Dummy Alex Sink, Dem leaders explained away the outcome by arguing that Republicans had a 13-point turnout advantage.......but the Dum-Dums failed to mention...................
PELOSI THE MAGIC VOTE-GETTER --- FOR REPUBLICANS Seems that invoking "Pelosi" was a vote-getter......for Republicans....(cackle).
National Journal reported Repub strategists had measured which messages were most effectively persuading voters to turn in their ballots.
<><> In Jolly's race, they turned to a message—delivered across a variety of digital platforms and email—that focused on urging Repubs to vote now or watch Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi move one step closer to reclaiming the speaker's gavel.<><>
...then-Democratic speaker Pelosi blithely, mindlessly said---but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass it to find out what's in it. .... an historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn't understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she'd done.......
....for the next three years Democrats would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they'd read the bill and understood its implications. They were later taken aback by complaints from their constituents.......
(The White House calculatedly kept the gruesome details to itself while egging on loyal lock-stepping Democrats to vote for it).
The WH lied to Americans in a way so specific, it showed they knew exactly what to spin and how......via the infamous "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan, period."
...so they’re just changing the law again?
Can you imagine if Bush tried this?!!!
Ha! There goes a big portion of the scheme that was intended to financially support Obamacare.
These cuts were supposed to help fund Obamacare. Without them, the deficit grows even further.
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