Trump Weighs Ultimate Gift to For-Profit Insurance Industry: Medicare Privatization

[Celerity]

“They want to remove the guarantee of Medicare,” one advocate said of the Trump administration’s floated plan to automatically enroll seniors in Medicare Advantage.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/medicare-advantage-default-enrollment



The Trump administration is considering enacting a policy that would automatically funnel seniors into for-profit Medicare Advantage plans—which critics say would set Medicare on the path to full-scale privatization.

Chris Klomp, the Trump administration’s director of Medicare and deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told STAT last month that enrolling seniors in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by default “is something that we’re thinking through.” MA plans are funded by the federal government and run by private insurance companies such as UnitedHealthcare and Humana, both of which have been accused of improperly denying necessary care to patients and overcharging taxpayers.

The default enrollment scheme was floated in the far-right Project 2025 agenda that President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to disavow. Currently, older Americans who have received Social Security benefits for at least four months before they turn 65 are automatically enrolled in traditional Medicare, and they can choose to enroll in an MA plan as an alternative.

“Another bad idea straight from Project 2025,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to Klomp’s comments on the proposed default enrollment change. “Medicare Advantage is private, for-profit insurance that overcharges American taxpayers by billions every year and regularly denies seniors the care they need.” “Making Medicare Advantage the default option hurts patients and taxpayers,” Pocan added, “but it will make insurance execs a lot of money.”

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[CousinIT]

1. Duplicate.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221165516

[Solly Mack]

2. ...