Maine AFL-CIO Executive Board Passes Resolution to Strengthen Medicare

The Maine AFL-CIO Executive Board voted on Wednesday to pass a resolution opposing efforts to privatize Medicare and to urge federal lawmakers to level the playing field between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage so beneficiaries don’t pay higher costs for choosing the traditional Medicare plan.

Since its creation in 1965, Medicare has provided national health care for seniors and people with disabilities. Ithas proven to be our most efficient and effective public health care program with administrative costs accounting for only 2-3 percent of Medicare spending. However, the federal government has since created various for-profit privatized health care programs within Medicare such as Medicare Part D (prescription drugs), MediGap (supplemental plans to cover Medicare’s 20 percent copays), and Medicare Advantage which is permitted to take up to 15 percent of every Medicare dollar for administration and profits for managing Medicare claims.

The Trump administration doubled down on privatizing Medicare through the Direct Contracting Pilot, rebranded under the Biden Administration as ACO-REACH, which allows private equity firms and Wall Street companies to take up to 25 percent or more of every Medicare dollar for administration and profits for managing Medicare claims. Recent reports by the HHS Inspector General, academic researchers, and investigative journalists have uncovered wide-ranging fraudulent practices, confirming that upcoding, delaying medically necessary care, and the denial of claims by insurers and other private businesses managing Medicare claims, together account for defrauding the Medicare Trust Fund and Medicare beneficiaries of many billions of dollars annually.

Insurers and Wall Street are fiercely lobbying to gain a larger share of the soon-to-be $1.6 trillion of annual Medicare spending by further privatizing Medicare turning it into a profit center, thus hastening the depletion of the Medicare Trust Fund at a time when Medicare beneficiaries are among the most vulnerable populations served in health care, and need more, not fewer benefits.

The resolution states that the Maine AFL-CIO is in opposition to Medicare privatization and urges our federal legislators and the Biden Administration to level the playing field between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage so that Medicare beneficiaries will not suffer additional costs by choosing Traditional Medicare and will have a genuine choice between the public and private program as a step towards increasing healthcare equity by:

• Eliminating the 20 percent Medicare co-pays and setting an out-of-pocket cap,
• Adding benefits to traditional Medicare permitted in private Medicare Advantage plans (adding vision, dental and hearing,)
• Eliminating the excessive administrative costs and profits in the Medicare Advantage and ACO-REACH programs; and
• Recouping funds for the Medicare Trust Fund from fraud and abuse by Medicare Advantage plans, as confirmed by the Department of Health & Human Services and Congressional investigations, in order to use the money thus saved to support a robust Traditional Medicare system that will lower costs and improve benefits, access and equity in Traditional Medicare for all seniors and disabled beneficiaries.

The Maine AFL-CIO is sending a copy of this Resolution to our two U.S. Senators and Congressional House members in their jurisdiction, as well as to President Biden and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.