Recently, the Center for Medicare Advocacy laid out our Medicare Platform for the New Congress. One of the core considerations to improve Medicare for all beneficiaries, now and in the future, is the need to preserve and expand consumer protections and quality coverage for all Medicare Beneficiaries – including parity between traditional Medicare and private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. We previously wrote about limited access to Medigap policies, oral health care, lack of an out-of-pocket cap on beneficiary expenses in traditional Medicare, and the need for comprehensive long-term services and supports (LTSS, also known as long term care). Last week, we discussed the ongoing payment imbalance between traditional Medicare and MA.
Another critical parity issue between traditional Medicare and MA plans is the manner in which Medicare options are presented to the public by the agency charged with running the Medicare program, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. As the Center has documented elsewhere, since Fall of 2017 CMS’ outreach and enrollment materials have encouraged beneficiaries to choose a private Medicare plan over traditional Medicare, instead of objectively presenting enrollment options. Rather than presenting differences between traditional Medicare and MA in a neutral, unbiased manner, CMS is overplaying the pluses of MA and downplaying any minuses in a manner that is highly misleading, at best. Our concerns include certain revisions to Medicare & You, online comparison tools, and education and outreach materials, including an enrollment period email campaign that downplayed or entirely left out the option of traditional Medicare altogether.
As noted in a December 2018 New York Times article by Robert Pear, MA plans have been getting “an unpublicized boost from the Trump administration, which [during the Fall enrollment period] extolled the virtues of the private plans in emails sent to millions of beneficiaries.” According to the article, a former chief actuary of CMS “said the emails sounded ‘more like Medicare Advantage plan advertising than objective information from a public agency.’”
CMS leadership has repeatedly denied that they are favoring private plans or steering Medicare beneficiaries towards enrolling in such plans, however actual experience and recently released materials from CMS suggest otherwise.
At a February 8, 2019 meeting of CMS’ National Medicare Education Program (NMEP), the agency released information about the 2018 Annual Coordinated Election Period (ACEP), sometimes referred to as “Open Enrollment” or “OP.” (Note: this is a downloadable “zip” file containing several items. See, in particular, the Powerpoint slide presentation entitled “Medicare OEP Outreach”). According to CMS, in 2018 it “tested targeted messaging to determine if we could have an impact on overall awareness and knowledge of Medicare Advantage among a limited set of People with Medicare.” (Slide 2)
CMS engaged in a “General Medicare Open Enrollment Email Outreach” campaign that went to approximately 7 million unique email subscribers nationwide. It consisted of 12 general Open Enrollment email bulletins that included messaging focused on deadline reminders and promoting eMedicare tools to compare plans and estimate costs. (Slide 11) While the Center’s analysis of this material showed that it downplayed or left out the option of traditional Medicare altogether, and could be interpreted by recipients to imply that they had no choice but to enroll in or stay in a private plan, CMS has engaged in even more blatant favoring of the MA program.
In addition to the general open enrollment campaign in the Fall of 2018, CMS engaged in targeted messaging through eight Medicare Advantage specific emails sent to approximately 1.2 million individuals in eight states with messaging that “[e]mphasized extra benefits of MA Plans and promoted Medicare Plan Finder tool to compare all options.” (Slide 12) This targeted messaging that emphasized MA included the following:
- “With Medicare Advantage, you can choose the coverage that’s right for you. Pick from a variety of plans to get the benefits that matter to you.
- Get more benefits for your money. Medicare Advantage plans include extra benefits like hearing, vision, and dental coverage.
- 4 out of 5 people pay a premium of less than $50 per month for their Medicare Advantage health and prescription drug plan.” (Slide 10)
By changing the tenor of its general outreach materials, and particularly with its targeted MA campaign, CMS is abdicating its duty to provide objective, balanced information about Medicare coverage options. Instead of continuing to tip the scales in favor of the Medicare Advantage program, we urge policymakers to advance complete equity between MA and traditional Medicare, including both the scope of services provided, programmatic spending, and CMS education and outreach. Congress should oversee CMS’ activities regarding Medicare Advantage to ensure the information it provides is complete and accurate, and to ensure all Medicare beneficiaries are treated equally.
February 2019 – D. Lipschutz