As the weeks go by, President Obama’s one-time promise that if you like the health insurance you have, you can keep it, erodes more and more.
This time, those who are in danger of learning how the broken promise affects them are the older Americans who participate in Medicare Advantage.
This part of Medicare relies on private health care plans such as health maintenance organizations to provide benefits and services that beneficiaries might not receive under traditional Medicare. Seniors might pay a little more in some cases but they also might receive more than they would in traditional Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans might cover some services that Medicare doesn’t cover, such as dental, hearing and vision. Medicare Advantage also has out-of-pocket limits for beneficiaries that regular Medicare does not.
Medicare Advantage provides people with health care options, and Congress created the program to do just that: give seniors more choices for their health care.
The private health insurance plans that participate in Medicare Advantage are more likely to be concentrated in metropolitan areas than rural areas. Logistically, it’s easier for them to locate where they have participating doctors and a big customer base. As a result, those of us from states with rural residents had to fight to make sure our residents had the same access to choices and valuable services as seniors in other parts of the country. You shouldn’t be at a disadvantage because you live in Iowa, not New York or Florida.
Rural state advocates succeeded in making sure Medicare Advantage payment rates were attractive enough to encourage health plans to participate in rural areas.
The program is popular. In 2013, 14.4 million Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, including tens of thousands of Iowans.
Now that success is under attack. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act cut Medicare Advantage to pay for other parts of his health care plan. The President’s administration just proposed regulations to implement those cuts.
With the payment cut specified as part of the Affordable Care Act, more and more Iowans will find they can’t keep the health care coverage they have.
I hear from Iowans every day who have lost their insurance, lost access to their doctors, and have seen their premiums go up because of the Affordable Care Act. I have serious concerns that because the President insists on barreling ahead with his law rather than coming to Congress to start over again, more Iowans are going to lose access to the services they need.
This is unacceptable. I’m committed to supporting common-sense approaches to reform that provide access to high-quality, low-cost health care.