the attitude with arnie arnesen Oct 13. the monday edition noon to 1pm EST streaming live on wnhnfm.org
Arnie Arnesen
New Hampshire consumers who wish to choose privatized Medicare are facing a churn in the Medicare Advantage market, with two carriers, Anthem and Martin’s Point, leaving and another, Aetna, reducing its coverage to the two most populous counties.
This is not the fault of the New Hampshire Insurance Department or state policymakers, as Medicare Advantage plans are not state-regulated. In fact, it is only due to a law pushed by Insurance Commissioner D.J. Bettencourt that we at least have advance notice of plans exiting.
Nor is this churn attributable to federal regulation, such as it is. In Washington, D.C., both political parties have lavished funding upon Medicare Advantage as the most-favored nation among health care expenditures, allowing it to overtake traditional, or fee-for-service (FFS), Medicare.
In March, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission reported that “Medicare will spend 20% more for (Medicare Advantage) enrollees than it would spend if those beneficiaries were enrolled in FFS Medicare,” and that Medicare Advantage overbilling alone may total $43 billion annually. Yet in April the federal government still announced a 7.16% increase in Medicare Advantage payment revenue, accounting for risk coding, for 2026. That dwarfs an announced 3.2% Medicare increase for nursing home care, let alone the announced (and disastrous) 6.4% Medicare cut for home health.
A year ago an audit of data by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found an unsupported $7.5 billion in risk-coded payments to Medicare Advantage insurers in 2023 alone. The Wall Street Journal found $50 billion in payments for questionable diagnoses from 2019-21, including over 66,000 Medicare Advantage beneficiaries diagnosed with “anatomically impossible” cataracts that had already been cured.
Nor do insurers passing on coverage here need a GoFundMe page. For example, Anthem’s parent, Elevance, reported $2.5 billion in profit in the second quarter of this year, and a year-over-year increase of 11% in Medicare Advantage enrollment.
Lincoln Mitchell teaches political science and public policy at Columbia University. He is the author of nine books and his writings have appeared at CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, NBC, the San Francisco Examiner and numerous other media platforms. For more of Lincoln’s work you can subscribe to his Substack “Kibitzing with Lincoln” at /lincolnmitchell.substack.com/.”
Ron began his career with the New Hampshire Public Defender in 1993 before establishing himself as one of the State's preeminent immigration lawyers. As a native of Chile and a naturalized United States citizen. Ron is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, where he serves as a chapter liaison to the New Hampshire U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services field office.The creativity and “outside-the-box” approach that Ron brings to his legal practice is often reflected in his sartorial choices, resulting in his unofficial designation as the area's "Best-Dressed Male Lawyer".
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D. ARNIE ARNESEN
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Host of "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen"