Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unveiled their final rate notice for Medicare Advantage – increasing the 2027 rate compared to the original proposal, which was effectively a freeze. While this rate notice represents a notable improvement over CMS’s initial proposal, rising healthcare costs remain a pressing concern as living costs continue to climb across the country.
Today, more than 35 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, and the program now covers most Medicare beneficiaries. Polling shows nearly 85 percent of seniors are satisfied with their plan. That success is the outcome of a design that emphasizes prevention and maintaining health rather than simply reacting to illness. Seniors remain focused on access to coverage, stability of benefits, and predictability of costs, and they will continue to make their voices heard.
Medicare is not public welfare. It is an earned benefit. Americans pay into it throughout their working lives with the expectation that the program they financed will be there in retirement. Medicare Advantage, in turn, is a Medicare-approved private plan that delivers those benefits in a more integrated way.
Unlike fee-for-service Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans are designed to keep patients healthy. They support preventive screenings, chronic disease management, and coordinated care. They also provide supplemental benefits that traditional Medicare does not cover, including dental, vision, and hearing coverage, transportation to medical appointments, wellness programs, and even gym memberships. These are practical tools that help seniors stay healthier longer, avoid preventable hospitalizations, and maintain independence.
For millions of seniors, many of whom live on fixed incomes, these benefits do more than improve quality of life – they reduce downstream costs for families and taxpayers alike. But when government payments fail to keep pace with actual healthcare costs, the difference does not disappear. It is pushed downstream. It shows up in fewer plan choices, reduced supplemental benefits, and higher out-of-pocket costs.
That is why stability in the program is so critical.
Following a $130 billion cut by the Biden administration, plans responded by scaling back supplemental benefits, narrowing provider networks, and in some cases, withdrawing from certain markets entirely. Conservatives should not continue to do the work of Medicare Advantage’s ideological critics by treating it as a budgetary soft target rather than a successful, market-based alternative. The improved rate notice suggests a course correction, but the underlying pressure remains.
None of this is to suggest that Medicare Advantage should be exempt from strict oversight. Payment accuracy matters. Incentives should be aligned, and oversight should be serious. But responsible stewardship is not the same as weakening a program that is demonstrably improving how care is delivered and helping contain long-term costs.
The deeper problem is that Washington keeps circling an earned benefit while avoiding larger, more structural problems and dysfunction elsewhere in the system, like Medicaid and its sister public welfare programs spread across dozens of agencies and bureaus.
Medicare, including Medicare Advantage, operates with defined national eligibility, dedicated financing, and a clear governing compact. Medicaid, by contrast, is a means-tested program marked by fragmented administration, inconsistent oversight, and significant complexity across states. That complexity weakens accountability and allows waste and inefficiency to persist.
A program built on a clearer structure will always be easier to supervise than one spread across fifty different systems layered with waivers, bureaucracy, and onerous rules. If Washington wants real fiscal discipline, it should target those structural weaknesses rather than defaulting to cuts in a program seniors have earned and depend on.
For conservatives, the distinction should be unmistakable: Medicare is an earned benefit, not a welfare program. Medicare is a social insurance program financed over a lifetime, and Medicare Advantage is the rare government program that improves outcomes and fiscal efficiency.
The right course is straightforward. Improve Medicare Advantage where it needs strengthening and fund it in line with the rising costs of hospital care and pharmaceuticals. Demand value for taxpayers. Protect seniors from hidden costs and unnecessary disruption. Then go where the real fiscal opportunity lies: correcting the structural weaknesses of the public welfare system.
The improved rate notice is a welcome step, but seniors are clear about what they need: stable coverage, reliable benefits, and predictable costs. Policymakers should build on this progress, not undermine it, and ensure Medicare Advantage remains appropriately funded for those who have earned and depend on it.
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