Health insurers seem to be making it more difficult on Presidential candidates pushing single payer versions of “Medicare for All” as they offer more benefits and services heading into 2020.
And that may help Pete Buttigieg more than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
It’s as if the health insurance industry is upping its game headed into the heat of the primaries and caucuses that will begin early next year to decide the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee to face Donald Trump should he be re-nominated by the Republican Party.
The new front-runner to win the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, Buttigieg has offered a “Medicare for all who want it” plan that offers a challenge to private insurance companies to bring down prices and costs or lose out to a less costly “comprehensive public alternative.” That compares to single payer versions of Medicare expansion proposed by Sens. Sanders and Warren that would uproot the private insurance system.
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“If private insurers are not able to offer something dramatically better, this public plan will create a natural glide-path to Medicare for All,” Buttigieg says on the campaign trail and on his web site. “The choice of a public plan empowers people to make their own decisions regarding the type of health care that makes sense for them by leveling the playing field between patients and the health care system.”
But in the last month alone, insurers have unveiled perhaps their richest benefit packages for Medicare Advantage, the privatized coverage for seniors subsidized by federal tax dollars. These changes come amid Medicare’s open enrollment, which runs through Dec. 7.
Insurers are taking advantage of new rules that allow Medicare Advantage plans to offer more benefits to seniors. Medicare Advantage plans contract with the federal government to provide extra benefits and services to seniors, such as disease management and nurse help hotlines with some also offering vision, dental care and wellness programs.
Earlier this month, CVS Health’s Aetna health insurance unit announced plans to roll out a new program for seniors with Miami-based Papa Inc. to address their loneliness and isolation, which can lead to poor health outcomes and illnesses, particularly those who already have multiple chronic conditions. And earlier this week, Walgreens Boots Alliance and UnitedHealth Group’s health insurance unit, UnitedHealthcare, said they are opening “Medicare services centers” inside the pharmacy chain’s U.S. drugstores in several markets effective in January 2020.
In the coming weeks, health insurers are going to begin reporting their financial outlooks for 2020, which could include some early projections on Medicare Advantage enrollment.
Given the expansions of many established health plans into new regions and an increasing number of new entrants and startups selling Medicare Advantage, enrollment for 2020 is expected to eclipse this year’s record. Enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans surpassed 22 million in 2018, which is 35% of total Medicare beneficiaries.
Source: Forbes
