The Lever - Lever Weekly: Medicare On Life Support

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Along with a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, and live events for all subscribers, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column. In this week’s piece, The Lever’s Matthew Cunningham-Cook explores the highs and lows of recent efforts to stop the privatization of Medicare — and what still needs to be done to address “one of the most pernicious developments of the Biden era.”

👇 Following is an excerpt of our subscriber-only column, and below that is a recap of all of our other work from the week.

MEDICARE ON LIFE SUPPORT

By Matthew Cunningham-Cook

When we first began covering the privatization of Medicare, the country’s public health care program for seniors and people with disabilities, the insurance industry’s quest to privatize Medicare was moving forward unabated. 

At the time, the Biden administration was pledging an unprecedented rebranding and expansion of a nefarious Trump-era program that would place seniors in for-profit Medicare plans without their knowledge or consent. Private insurers had just scored the largest Medicare premium price hike in history, and Medicare Advantage, the private, for-profit alternative to traditional Medicare, was on the verge of covering a majority of Medicare beneficiaries nationwide for the first time ever.

Since then, we’ve aggressively covered the expansion of Medicare Advantage and other privatization schemes, uncovering one of the most pernicious developments of the Biden era, since for-profit Medicare plans have been associated with worse patient outcomes and higher costs. 

Our work has delivered results. This year, Medicare Advantage insurers...