GOP Raps MNE to stifle insurers on Medicare

 

Thursday, Sep 24,2009, 1:39:39 PM   Click:

WASHINGTON_Republican legislators criticized Obama Tuesday for saying the health insurance companies to stop warning elderly clients they will lose benefits of health care legislation, which some likened to a gag order.

At least one leading insurer has distorted the bills waiting to scare older Americans, the administration said. But GOP leaders said the companies, whose income could be reduced by legislation, are entitled to freedom of expression and political debate.

Exchange Tuesday was a Senate committee began debating a bill for health care most Republicans opposed. President Barack Obama supports the main provisions of the bill, and the flap on mailers insurance companies is the latest front in case of long-standing dispute.

"It is outrageous that the Obama administration is trying to keep seniors in the dark about the consequences of costly government-run Democratic Congress bill of health care," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

The Senate's GOP leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said citizens and companies "have a fundamental right to talk about legislation they favor or oppose."

McConnell called the notice to insurance companies a "gag order, enforced through an agency of the federal government."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid on Monday sent a notice to all companies that sell private Medicare coverage and stand-alone drug plans to seniors. Saying at least one insurer was misleading those customers about the proposed legislation, it told the companies "to immediately discontinue all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your Web sites."

The warning came after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., launched an investigation of Humana Inc. Humana is one of the largest private insurers participating in a program called Medicare Advantage.

Federal subsidies to private Medicare plans average about 14 percent higher than those involved in traditional fee-for-service Medicare coverage. The health care bills pending in Congress would reduce or eliminate the difference.

Obama has insisted that despite those reductions and other planned cuts to Medicare providers, seniors would not see their benefits reduced under a health care overhaul. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf contradicted that Tuesday under questioning by Finance Committee Republicans, saying seniors in the private Medicare Advantage plans could see reduced benefits under Baucus' legislation.

Proposed changes "would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans," Elmendorf said.

A Humana mailer, now discontinued, told customers, "if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable." It encouraged customers to contact their members of Congress.