Health insurance companies are already
reporting unprecedented growth in signing up seniors to their Medicare plans
for 2020, which is bad news for certain Democrats pushing single payer versions
of “Medicare for All.”
The nation’s largest health insurer,
UnitedHealth Group, last week reported its best growth ever for enrollment in
individual Medicare Advantage, the private coverage sold by health plans via
contracts with the federal government. UnitedHealth’s UnitedHealthcare health
insurance unit was the first of the big health insurers to report quarterly earnings and updated
2020 projections for what is expected to be a record year of growth for Medicare
Advantage. Other insurers including the Aetna unit of CVS Health, Anthem, Cigna
and Humana will be reporting their quarterly earnings in the next two months.
“Within our Medicare Advantage offerings
including dual eligible growth, we expect to serve nearly 700,000 more people
in 2020,” UnitedHealth Group chief executive David Wichmann told analysts on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call
last week.
Wichmann described the most recent open
enrollment period, which ended in early December for seniors to choose their
Medicare health and drug coverage for 2020, as UnitedHealth’s “strongest ever”
for individual Medicare Advantage.
UnitedHealth’s record Medicare Advantage
enrollment comes as most Democrats running for their party’s nomination for the
Presidency back off a single payer version of Medicare for All that
would uproot the private insurance industry. And that would in effect end a
Medicare Advantage program that has already signed up more than one in three
Medicare eligible seniors and growing.
But more seniors signing up for private
Medicare Advantage means it will be politically harder for it to be taken away
and replaced with a government-run single-payer version of Medicare for All
pushed most notably by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Sanders continues to push single payer
Medicare and last week during a debate in Des Moines reiterated that his plan
has no copayments or deductibles. Meanwhile, Democrats that include former Vice
President Joe Biden and most others still in the race are touting an effort to
build on existing coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, historically a supporter of Sanders plan, has backed off moving all Americans to a
government-run healthcare system in favor of first bolstering the ACA and
introducing a public option.
As more baby boomers turn 65 and become
eligible for Medicare, insurers and the federal government are seeing more of
them sign up for private Medicare Advantage than the government-run traditional
fee-for-service Medicare.
This year, Medicare Advantage plans are
offering more supplement health benefits under new rules established by the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which has seen a record
number of health plans selling coverage that offers seniors the same benefits
as traditional Medicare plus extras like preventative care and outpatient
healthcare services.
“We are bullish obviously overall on the
outlook for both Medicare Advantage, but also the dual special needs
marketplace as well,” UnitedHealth’s Wichmann said. “They are both very larger
today and growing in markets. MA is clearly outperforming fee-for-service in
terms of overall benefit coverages and the quality of outcomes and the returns
that people are getting in terms of their overall satisfaction and so no
surprise that it is performing as well and seems to be gaining some momentum.”
The lack of momentum for a single payer
version of Medicare for All among Democrats vying to challenge President Donald
Trump should Republicans re-nominate him to run for a second term isn’t lost on
health plans signing up seniors to Medicare Advantage.
The health insurance industry and its
supporters say Medicare Advantage is more about “modernizing” Medicare with the
help of the private sector and seniors are increasingly recognizing the
difference.
“Despite the lower costs, better outcomes, and
high satisfaction that defines Medicare Advantage, some would argue for
policies that threaten the success of Medicare Advantage and turn back the
clock on innovative care models that enable seniors to live healthier lives,”
Allyson Schwartz, a former Democratic Congresswoman and president and CEO of
Better Medicare Alliance wrote in an opinion column in the Jan. 7th issue
of the journal Health Affairs.
“From my time leading a women’s health center,
to my work as Commissioner of Health and Human Services in Philadelphia, to my
service in Congress crafting health policy on the Ways and Means Committee, to
my role today, I believe health care is a basic human right,” Schwartz wrote. “As we seek to address
Americans’ very real concerns, we should fix what is broken in our health care
system, while strengthening that which works to ensure coverage and quality at
a cost we can all afford.”
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