Policy Priorities The Medicare Rights Center (MRC) translates lessons learned in its direct service and education work into recommendations for how to make Medicare work better for the people it serves. Currently MRC’s policy work is focused on the following five issues.

1. Add Drug Coverage Option to the Original Medicare Program

Medicare drug coverage is the only Medicare benefit that is not available through the traditional, government-administered program. It is only available from private insurance companies leading to increased costs and confusion.

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• The Best Medicine: A Drug Coverage Option Under Original Medicare (PDF)
  

2. Reform the Medicare Private Health Plan Marketplace

Taxpayers would save $65 billion over the next five years Medicare private health plans (now known as Medicare Advantage plans) were paid the same amount per enrollee that it costs to care for an individual covered by the government-run Original Medicare program. The rush of hundreds of insurance plans that want a piece of the Medicare pie has led to rampant consumer and marketing fraud.

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• Too Good to Be True: The Fine Print in Medicare Private Health Plan Benefits (PDF)
  

• After the Goldrush: The Marketing of Medicare Advantage and Part D Plans (PDF)
  

• The Case for Standardizing and Simplifying Medicare Private Health Plans (PDF)
  

• Reclaiming Medicare
  

3. Make Low-income Assistance More Accessible

Everyone with Medicare, regardless of income, should be able to get the care and benefits they need. Improvements needed to accomplish this include making the applications for low-income assistance easier to complete, eliminating or increasing the asset tests and streamlining the eligibility criteria so if someone enrolls in one program they can be automatically enrolled in other programs for which they qualify.

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• Medicare Savings Plans and Low Income Subsidy: Keeping Medicare's Promise (PDF)
  

4. Eliminate Waiting Period for People with Disabilities

People with disabilities should not have to wait two years after they have proven they are permanently disabled and cannot work to get the health coverage they need. They should become eligible for Medicare as soon as they start getting their Social Security Disability Benefits.

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• Too Sick to Work, Too Soon for Medicare: The Human Cost of the Two-Year Medicare Waiting Period for Americans with Disabilities (PDF)
  

5. Create Mental Health Parity in Medicare

Medicare coverage discriminates against people with mental health conditions by only paying 50% of the cost of outpatient mental health care. Medicare should cover it at 80 percent of its approved rate, as it does for all other outpatient medical services.

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• Mental Health Parity for Medicare
  

→ Read more policy reports and testimony on these and other issues.