By Sneha S K<\/p>\n
March 11 (Reuters) – A congressional committee’s investigators released a report on Tuesday that found the average American senior’s Medicare premiums \u200clast year were about 10% higher due to alleged overpayments to private \u200cMedicare Advantage plans.<\/p>\n
Medicare Part B premiums that most seniors pay were partly pushed up by controversial \u200bhealth-insurer practices such as adding diagnoses to trigger higher payments, according to the Joint Economic Committee, a bipartisan group of lawmakers that advises Congress on financial matters.<\/p>\n
Medicare is a U.S. government program for individuals aged 65 and older or those with disabilities. \u200cThe government reimburses private health \u2060plans, called Medicare Advantage, a set amount for each patient but pays more if patients are sicker.<\/p>\n
Medicare Part B provides coverage \u2060for outpatient services including doctor visits, diagnostic tests and physician-administered drugs.<\/p>\n
The committee found that in 2025 the federal government paid health insurers who offer Medicare Advantage plans up \u200bto $84 billion \u200bmore than it would have cost to \u200bcover the same beneficiaries under \u200cits own government-run Medicare plans.<\/p>\n
It estimates Medicare overpayments increased Part B premiums by $212 for enrollees in 2025, totaling $13.4 billion in higher premiums.<\/p>\n
These higher Part B premiums negatively impact seniors as they are deducted directly from their social security checks.<\/p>\n
By 2035, per-person premiums are projected to double from $2,440 to about $5,000, the report found, making the \u200cplans less affordable to seniors.<\/p>\n
The Committee calculated the \u200boverpayments based on findings by the congressional Medicare \u200bPayment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC.<\/p>\n
“Numerous \u200bexperts continue to warn that making policy based on MedPAC’s \u200cfundamentally flawed data, methodology and extrapolations could \u200bharm 35 million \u200bMedicare beneficiaries who choose MA for more affordable, high-quality health care coverage and who will renew their coverage in October of 2026,” said a spokesperson \u200bfor AHIP, an association \u200crepresenting U.S. health insurers.<\/p>\n
Government investigators have been probing how health insurers’ billing \u200bpractices have contributed to Medicare Advantage costs.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sneha S K \u200bin Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sneha S K March 11 (Reuters) – A congressional committee’s investigators released a report on Tuesday that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[233921,97,252,68740,156103,253,1342,9448],"class_list":["post-517465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-congressional-committee","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-care-coverage","tag-health-insurers","tag-healthcare","tag-medicare","tag-medicare-advantage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}