The right-wing policy agenda written for a new Donald Trump presidency would “greatly accelerate” efforts to privatize Medicare
Last year, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans eligible for Medicare were on privatized Medicare Advantage plans. If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify.
Conservative operatives have already sketched out what the GOP’s policy agenda would look like in the early days of a new Donald Trump presidency. As Rolling Stone has detailed, the proposed Project 2025 agenda is radically right-wing. One item buried in the 887-page blueprint has attracted little attention thus far, but would have a monumental impact on the health of America’s seniors and the future of one of America’s most popular social programs: a call to “make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option” for people who are newly eligible for Medicare.
Such a policy would hasten the end of the traditional Medicare program, as well as its foundational premise: that seniors can go to any doctor or provider they choose. The change would be a boon for private health insurers — which generate massive profits and growing portions of their revenues from Medicare Advantage plans — and further consolidate corporate control over the United States health care system.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify.
Philip Verhoef, president of the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program, tells Rolling Stone it would be “disastrous” to make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option.
As The New York Times reported in 2018, during Medicare’s open enrollment period, the Trump administration emailed messages to millions of beneficiaries touting the private plans.
Trump’s administration also helped make Medicare Advantage more attractive by expanding the range of perks the plans can offer to enrollees, allowing them to add benefits such as transportation to doctors’ offices and meal delivery.
Medicare Advantage plans, he says, are “tasked with managing your care, and telling you what you can and can’t do, and what is and is not covered — that is the opposite of putting beneficiaries in control of how they spend their dollars.”
But the financial incentive to deny care is baked into the Medicare Advantage model: The private plans are given a fixed amount of money every month to provide coverage for each enrollee; paying out fewer dollars means extra profit.
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