Judging by more than 16,400 comments recently posted on a federal government website, you’d think there was a groundswell of older Americans demanding that federal officials hike payments to their Medicare Advantage health insurance plans.
Yet about 82% of the comments are identical to a letter that appeared on the website of a secretive advocacy group called Medicare Advantage Majority, a data analysis by KFF Health News has found.
The “dark money” group does not reveal its funders or much else — other than to say it is “dedicated to protecting and strengthening Medicare Advantage” and is “powered by hundreds of thousands of local advocates nationwide.”
“Our campaign provides information and offers tools for concerned Americans to use to reach decision makers,” spokesperson Darren Grubb said in an email. The group has spent more than $3.1 million on hundreds of Facebook ads since September 2024, according to Facebook’s Ad Library, a database of the social media company’s online ads.
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There’s no doubt health insurers are unhappy with a January proposal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, to keep Medicare Advantage reimbursement rates essentially flat in 2027 — far less than they expected from the Trump administration.
Medicare Advantage plans differ from traditional Medicare because private insurance companies administer them. The insurance plans enroll about 35 million members, more than half the people eligible for Medicare. The plans offer things like vision and drug coverage, but Medicare Advantage insurers restrict the hospitals and doctors that patients can use and require prior approval for various procedures.
CMS is set to announce a final decision by early next month on the rate proposal. The agency solicited public comments on the proposal from Jan. 26 through Feb. 25 to give interested parties and the public a chance to air their views.
Medicare Advantage Majority, which says the rate proposal amounts to a “cut” in services and warns of …