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Rubio presses HHS to soften Medicare Advantage cuts
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pushed the federal Medicare agency on Friday to scale back its proposed cuts to private Medicare Advantage plans.
The insurance industry is aggressively fighting the cuts, and has been looking for lawmakers to take up their case with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Rubio urged CMS Friday to use different assumptions about how Medicare will pay doctors next year — a change that would almost certainly lead the agency to scale back its proposed 2.2 percent cut.
"On behalf of my constituents in Florida who rely on Medicare Advantage to receive their Medicare benefits, I am deeply concerned that if CMS fails to reverse its preliminary decision on this critically important issue, many MA enrollees may experience disruptions in their health care benefits and choices," Rubio wrote.
But that cut has been built into the law for years, and Congress almost always comes up with a short-term "doc fix" to avoid it. Rubio said CMS should recalculate its Medicare Advantage cuts under the assumption that Congress will pass another "doc fix" and the scheduled cut to doctors won't happen.
The doc fix is a perennial headache for budget wonks — because the cuts are enshrined in law and each patch is only temporary, it artificially lowers projected Medicare spending in budget baselines.
Rubio, though, said CMS has the legal authority to base its payment rates on an assumption that Congress will act, rather than on the letter of the law.
"At a time when a number of other significant policy changes also are impacting the MA program, I believe it is important for you to address this specific issue through the administrative process," Rubio wrote.
