For the second year in a row, the Biden administration plans to reduce payments to Medicare’s private health plans.

This comes as Medicare Advantage—the system of private, competing health plans—enrolls more than 33 million people, well over half of the entire Medicare population.

Private health plans now dominate Medicare coverage.

The Left is relentlessly hostile to private health coverage, and that includes Medicare Advantage. For example, Dr. Donald Berwick, then-President Barack Obama’s CMS administrator, sees Medicare Advantage’s growing popularity as a threat to the viability of traditional Medicare, and recently remarked, “I would like to see Medicare Advantage slowed or stopped right now, or at least forced to have better carriers.”

That’s rich. While running Medicare, Berwick praised Britain’s “single-payer” National Health Service, a government national insurance program, as a “global treasure.” Last year, that “global treasure” left 7.2 million British citizens on waiting lists, or almost 11% of the entire British population.

Payment Cut: Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that runs the Medicare program, issued an “advance notice” of Medicare Advantage’s payment rates for 2025.

The changes include a series of technical adjustments to several key components of the system’s mind-numbingly complex payment system, such as how the government’s annual “benchmark” payments to plans are to be set, how the agency will adjustment payments for beneficiaries’ health risks, and how the agency will allocate bonuses to plans based on their performance on health care quality measures.

CMS says that the proposed changes will increase overall Medicare Advantage payment by 3.7% in 2025 over 2024, amounting to $16 billion in revenues.

The Biden administration is also saying that the proposed changes will ensure the payments are accurate, protect........

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