Tom Cotton Rails Against Biden’s Move to Cut Medicare Advantage

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) railed against President Joe Biden’s proposed move to cut Medicare Advantage as the president continues to attack Republicans for allegedly wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security.

“House Republicans are threatening to cut Social Security and Medicare, putting the dignity of millions of Americans who rely on these programs at risk. I won’t stand for that. We ought to strengthen these programs – not gut them,” Biden wrote on Sunday. The president has frequently accused Republicans of wanting to cut entitlement programs as part of a potential compromise to raise the debt ceiling.

However, as Twitter’s fact check noted, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has said that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table.

Cotton noticed the apparent hypocrisy in Biden’s rhetoric, noting that his administration has proposed to cut Medicare Advantage, an increasingly popular option for American seniors.

The Arkansas Republican wrote, “It’s President Biden who is proposing to cut Medicare Advantage, a program used by almost 4 in 10 Arkansas seniors. This would be a mistake.”

Biden’s administration has proposed two cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage program. Breitbart News explained:

In the first plan, the Biden administration plans to claw back at least $4.7 billion from 2023 through 2032 by identifying and recovering alleged overpayments.

In the other, more drastic move, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said Medicare Advantage insurers could face an average 2.3 percent cut to baseline payments in 2024. This would be a cut of more than $3 billion to the Medicare Advantage industry.

Medicare Advantage, otherwise known as Medicare Part C, is a private-public partnership in which Medicare pays private-sector health insurers a fixed payment. The insurer then pays for the healthcare expenses of enrollees. Many American seniors are increasingly choosing Medicare Advantage over traditional Medicare. A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) analysis found that 48 percent of Medicare beneficiaries enroll in Medicare Advantage.

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) and a member of the Ways and Means Committee, explained that American seniors choose Medicare Advantage because it offers more choices and often offers better benefits.

“Public-private partnerships like Medicare Advantage [MA] provide more choices and better benefits for our seniors; we need to look to the successes of programs like MA and replicate these efforts across other government programs. The private sector has always delivered better results,” Hern explained in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News. “Biden just cut nearly $5 billion in funding for Medicare Advantage, and this is just his first step. The end goal is to get everyone – not just seniors – onto government-controlled, Medicare-for-All plans.”