Thank you to all for another fantastic National Voices of Medicare Summit

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2026 National Voices of Medicare Summit
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With Gratitude to CMA’s Generous 2026 Sponsors

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Thank you to all who participated in the

2026 National Voices of Medicare Summit

Defending the Public Promise

On May 20, 2026, the Center for Medicare Advocacy held its 13^th Annual National Voices of Medicare Summit. The Summit convened community leaders in advocacy, policymaking, medicine, philanthropy, and academia to discuss best practices, solutions, and opportunities in efforts to advance access to comprehensive Medicare coverage, health equity, and quality health care, grounded by community voices.

Welcome & Opening

David Lipschutz, Center for Medicare Advocacy’s Co-Director, opened by celebrating CMA’s 40th anniversary and Medicare/Medicaid’s 60th, while noting that both programs face serious threats. He framed the day’s agenda as intentionally broad, reflecting Medicare’s interconnection with Medicaid, Social Security, and adjacent programs.

Panel 1: The Value of Social Insurance

Moderated by Rebecca Vallas, CEO, National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI); featuring former Social Security Commissioner and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley

This panel grounded the day in the moral and political foundations of social insurance. Gov. Martin O’Malley argued that the programs were built on a shared American belief in human dignity and mutual responsibility, invoking FDR’s declaration that ‘our first principle is the security of the men, women, and children of our nation.’ He pushed back on fatalism about Social Security’s future, presenting data showing 87% of Americans want it strengthened — and offering a concrete fix: eliminating the cap on income subject to Social Security tax (‘scrap the cap’), which would extend the program’s solvency to 2090 while increasing benefits.

He also addressed the staffing crisis at the Social Security Administration, showing how intentional underfunding — staff cut to a 50-year low — has produced the long wait times and service failures beneficiaries experience. Rebecca Vallas framed the political moment as ‘a battle of imagination about what kind of society we are choosing to be,’ a theme she wove throughout her remarks.

Panel 2: Privatization Threats to Medicare

Featuring Wendell Potter, former health insurance executive and whistleblower, interviewed by David Lipschutz

Potter, who worked at Humana and Cigna before becoming an advocate, offered a detailed critique of Medicare Advantage’s impact on beneficiaries and the traditional Medicare program. He described prior authorization as a profit tool routinely used to deny medically necessary care — noting that few beneficiaries know they can appeal, and insurance companies rely on that fact. He recounted his own mother’s repeated denials for skilled nursing care while enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan he had encouraged his parents to join.

MedPAC estimates, cited during the panel, put Medicare Advantage overpayment at $76 billion in 2026, driven by, among other things, risk-score manipulation and quality bonus programs that don’t improve quality. Potter argued that this cost passes to all taxpayers and raises Part B premiums. He called health insurance ‘a market failure’ and urged sustained advocacy, payment reform, and transparency as antidotes.

“Insurance companies know that [few people appeal]. It’s baked into their revenue and profit expectations. They know that a very small percentage of people… will appeal a denial. They go without the care they need.”
— Wendell Potter

“Traditional Medicare has its hands tied behind its back when it’s trying to compete with the big companies that are able to go out there advertising so-called extra benefits while obscuring the downsides of enrolling.”
— Wendell Potter

Panel 3: Healthcare Challenges and Opportunities

Moderated by Tim Engelhardt (Aging and Disability Health Policy Lab); panelists Leo Cuello (Georgetown Center for Children and Families), Arianna Aboulafia (Center for Democracy and Technology), Sarah Coombs (National Partnership for Women and Families)

This was the Summit‘s broadest and most policy-dense session. Leo Cuello walked through HR 1’s Medicaid provisions, predicting 10 million people losing coverage, with adults aged 55–64 bearing the heaviest burden. He dissected the work requirement provisions, warning that the White House is pushing CMS to narrow ‘medical frailty’ exemptions and require burdensome documentation — placing the most vulnerable at risk of losing coverage despite qualifying on paper.

Cuello also forcefully reframed the fraud narrative: of the $1 trillion in cuts, only about 2.5% relates to actual fraud, while the epicenter of federal fraud allegations is home-based care — precisely the services advocates have spent 20 years expanding. Engelhardt and Cuello together concluded that HR 1 proponents’ claim not to affect Medicare is false: Medicaid cuts directly harm the roughly 20% of Medicare enrollees who are dually enrolled, and provisions rolling back enrollment simplification mean millions of low-income beneficiaries remain disenrolled from savings programs they qualify for.

“One of the things this administration is saying is that the reason for being suspicious about home-based services is that usage of the services is growing. That’s literally what we have been trying to do for the last 20 years. That is what we want. And their justification itself wildly misunderstands what is happening.”
— Leo Cuello

Aboulafia addressed AI in healthcare, urging advocates not to cede the field to technologists. She argued that disability data is systematically underrepresented in AI training sets, making automated coverage decisions potentially harmful to the people they’re meant to serve. She called for mandatory transparency (people should know when AI is making decisions about their care) and both pre- and post-deployment auditing for disability bias. She also warned against the rush to ‘win the AI race’ by deploying tools without centering the affected populations.

“AI is not good, it’s not bad, but never neutral. What I mean by that: the tools themselves are just tools, but in these systems, it’s never neutral.“
— Arianna Aboulafia

Sarah Coombs raised concerns about the new CMMI ACCESS model, which reimburses tech-enabled chronic care companies but was designed around employer populations — not older, more complex Medicare beneficiaries. She highlighted the GUIDE model for dementia care as a more promising counter-example, noting its focus on keeping people at home, providing respite care, and supporting unpaid family caregivers — who are disproportionately women.

Community Voice: Cara’s Story

Cara, who will turn 50 this year and has lived with MS for 38 years, described her multi-year battle to obtain a rolling shower chair through her Medicare Advantage plan. A former middle school teacher who went on Social Security Disability in 2012, she is now quadriplegic. Denied at every level, including by an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), she eventually prevailed with CMA’s help by reframing the chair as a mobility device, not bathroom equipment. Her story illustrated what CMA described as a systemic problem: ‘We are in a healthcare system where it takes a team of advocates and attorneys to find exactly the right way to code a piece of medical equipment… to convince someone that this person needs it. This should not happen.’

“Personal hygiene is necessary. Otherwise, you will get more infections, more issues, more sick. Insurance — even Medicare — doesn’t look at the whole point of everything. They want to deny.”
— Cara
Hear it in Cara’s own words at youtu.be/lrq8c2gh0ps.

Panel 4: Long-Term Care Challenges

Moderated by David Lipschutz; panelists Alison Barkoff (George Washington University, former ACL Administrator), Natalie Kean (Justice in Aging), Toby Edelman (CMA)

The panelists described a long-term care system already near the breaking point, now facing catastrophic new pressure. Barkoff noted that even before HR 1’s major funding cuts take effect in 2027, advocates have already documented 60 adverse state-level actions in 25 states — mostly cuts to provider rates and home-based services. She noted that 700,000 people are already on waiting lists for home and community-based services (HCBS), and that the federal ‘fraud’ attack on HCBS is targeting the very growth in home-based care that advocates have worked for decades to achieve.

Natalie Kean highlighted that the population most dependent on these services, older women living alone with conditions like Alzheimer’s, has the fewest alternatives. Toby Edelman offered historical perspective, drawing a direct line from the early Reagan-era rollback of nursing home residents’ rights to the landmark 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act — arguing that even in the darkest political moments, sustained advocacy has produced transformative change.

“We don’t have quality nursing homes for people to go when states start cutting services. Having done 30 years of advocacy I feel like we are on the shakiest ground we have been on in a very long time.”
— Alison Barkoff

Barkoff closed with a formulation she had offered in the panel’s planning conversations: that the goal is to move from ‘the politically impossible to the politically inevitable,’ pointing to the 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act as evidence that even in the most difficult political climates, sustained advocacy can produce transformative law. In a timely development, a Senate Finance Committee “Dear Colleague” letter signed by the Ranking Member and 17 other senators called for bold new thinking on long-term care, including solutions beyond the Medicaid framework.

Litigation in Advocacy

Josh Norris, CMA Litigation Director

In his first remarks as CMA’s new litigation director, Norris argued that Medicare advocacy must stay rooted in the basic human needs of the people it serves — a home, meaningful relationships, dignity — rather than becoming absorbed in bureaucratic procedure. He described CMA’s litigation establishing that Medicare covers care to maintain a patient’s condition (not only to produce improvement – Jimmo v. Seblius) as a model of how legal advocacy can restore coherence to systems that have drifted from their purpose.

He warned that privatization exponentially amplifies the risk of dehumanization, as algorithmic denials and profit imperatives displace clinical judgment. He framed the litigation mission in terms of what’s at stake for the person — not the code or the claim.

“We are not litigating for home health services. We are protecting a person’s right to lay their head down in their own bed in their home tonight.”
— Josh Norris

Alfred Chiplin Social Justice Award: Presented to Dr. Natalia Chalmers

The closing segment honored Dr. Natalia Chalmers, a pediatric dentist and former CMS Chief Dental Officer, for her work embedding oral health into Medicare policy. Introduced by CMA Founder Judith Stein and Senior Advocate Wey-Wey Kwok, Dr. Chalmers was credited with leading the regulatory and administrative work that resulted in Medicare covering medically necessary dental care for patients undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplants, and dialysis — a landmark shift. She also drove development of a Medicare claim form usable by dental providers, a necessary condition for the coverage to actually reach patients.

Dr. Chalmers explicitly flagged that forces are currently at play which may threaten to roll back this progress — a warning that the assembled advocates took as a call to vigilance. In accepting the award, she was clear-eyed about and forward-looking about the work remaining.

“The mouth is part of the body. This work is not finished. I would say it’s just begun.“
— Dr. Natalia Chalmers

The award is named for Alfred Chiplin, longtime managing attorney of CMA’s Washington, D.C. office, who died in 2017. It honors his commitment to civility, social justice, and the dignity of every person he served.

We are grateful to all who joined us live and online as we convened community leaders in advocacy, policymaking, medicine, philanthropy, and academia to discuss the best practices, solutions, and opportunities in efforts to advance access to comprehensive Medicare coverage, health equity, and quality health care, grounded by community voices. We are grateful to all our presenters and panelists, and particularly thankful to our generous 2026 sponsors. And CMA is pleased to once again offer our congratulations to Dr. Natalia Chalmers DDS, MHSc, PhD, who received the 2026 Alfred J. Chiplin, Jr. Social Justice & Advocacy Award. Thank you all for another great year!