Medicare Advantage organizations (MAOs) continue to do a poor job of maintaining accurate provider directories. These essential documents, which beneficiaries depend on to make informed plan selection and provider choices, have long been a source of frustration and confusion for Medicare beneficiaries and advocates.

This week, Medicare Rights Center submitted comments in response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed rule for Medicare Parts C & D. The proposed rule contemplates many broad changes to the Medicare Advantage and prescription drug coverage programs, largely focusing on providing more flexibility and options for plan sponsors. CMS’s stated aim is to allow plans to use the proposed flexibility to better serve beneficiaries—by creating disease- or condition-specific sets of benefits, offering more plans, and altering cost sharing arrangements.

This week, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) request to increase the frequency of review for Medicare Advantage (MA) plan networks.

The House Republican tax plan is currently being debated by the Ways and Means Committee, and several of the provisions would have a devastating impact on older adults and people with disabilities. Most notably, the plan does away with the medical expense deduction, which allows people who spend more than 10% of their income on health care expenses to deduct the remainder of their medical expenses from their federally taxed income.

Medicare Rights, along with other organizations, sent a letter to congress urging them to protect this deduction. The letter highlights how this deduction helps people facing huge medical bills keep a bit more in their pockets–perhaps delaying enrolling in Medicaid, the state and federal program that covers healthcare and long-term care expenses for people with low incomes and limited assets.

Last week, the Medicare Rights Center (Medicare Rights) submitted comments to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on their draft strategic plan for 2018-2022. The draft document sets out HHS’s priorities and goals for the next four years, and it identifies areas of focus and activities HHS will undertake to achieve these goals

In December, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a demonstration program that will test new ways for Medicare to pay hospitals that perform heart or hip surgeries, but more recently, CMS has withdrawn that rule and cancelled the project. As part of the demonstration announcement, CMS also announced the creation of an ombudsman to serve people with Medicare in this model and other similar programs—a move applauded by Medicare Rights.

This week, the Kaiser Family foundation released a study that examines the size and composition of physician networks in Medicare Advantage plans. A plan’s network is often a major consideration for people with Medicare when choosing between Medicare Advantage and Original Medicare.

Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Todd Young (R-IN) recently reintroduced the bipartisan Beneficiary Enrollment Notice and Eligibility Simplification (BENES) Act (S. 1909)—an act strongly supported by Medicare Rights. The BENES Act simplifies Part B enrollment periods and requires the federal government to provide advance notification to people approaching Medicare eligibility about enrollment rules and how Medicare works with other coverage.

Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), along with co-sponsors Dean Heller (R-NV) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), released a revised version of legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) this week, often referred to as the Graham-Cassidy bill. The Senators claimed that the bill includes no “draconian cuts.” In substance, however, the Graham-Cassidy bill retains many of the components of recent failed attempts to undo the ACA.

Members of Congress are returning to Washington, DC as the summer recess winds down, putting health care policy issues back in the spotlight. Policy experts expect the fall to be busy with significant activity expected in Congress and in the administration.