WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee that sets national health policy, joined his Democratic colleagues last week in calling for the Biden Administration to implement additional consumer protections in Medicare Advantage (MA). The letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, comes amidst a dramatic increase in complaints of deceptive marketing practices, with complaints doubling between 2020 and 2021.
“We write today to urge the CMS to step up its oversight of marketing practices in the Medicare Advantage program and implement commonsense regulations to ensure beneficiaries can make informed choices about their Medicare coverage,” the Senators wrote to Secretary Becerra and Administrator Brooks-LaSure. “We share the same goal to enable the offering of MA plan choices that are valuable to seniors and people living with disabilities. Yet, our first responsibility is to protect beneficiaries and the integrity of the MA program from fraudsters and scam artists who look to take advantage of any opportunity to prioritize profits over beneficiary health and well-being.”
The letter calls for the following steps to bolster consumer protection for seniors:
- Reinstate protections loosened during the Trump Administration.
- Monitor MA disenrollment patterns and use enforcement authority to hold bad actors accountable.
- Provide clear guidelines and trainings to ensure agents and brokers understand and adhere to best practices.
- Implement robust rules around MA marketing materials and close regulatory loopholes that allow cold-calling.
- Support unbiased sources of information for beneficiaries, including State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs) and the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP).
Earlier this month, Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released a report that further confirmed this increase, and described tactics used by insurance companies, brokers, and third party marketers to push seniors to sign up for their plans, including deceptive mail advertisements, misleading claims about increasing Social Security benefits, aggressive in-person marketing tactics, and enrolling beneficiaries in a new plan without their consent.
Joining Sen. Menendez in signing the letter were Sens. Wyden, Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Tom Carper, (D-Del.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
The text of the letter can be downloaded HERE.
