The presidential campaign ads have finally gone silent, but millions of American seniors are still in the process of making a different kind of choice right now during the Medicare open enrollment period. They are receiving confusing messages about how to manage their healthcare, while being bombarded with mailers and TV commercials touting low premium coverage. Meanwhile, almost two million have found out that the plan they purchased last year no longer exists.

It shouldn’t be this way. And unfortunately, the wasteful program known as “Medicare Advantage” could expand under a second Trump administration.

For starters, this is not really Medicare per se — it’s an array of hundreds of different plans offered by private for-profit insurance giants. Advantage might be the operative word here, especially for the insurers that dominate this business. These companies have turned hundreds of billions of dollars of publicly-subsidized overpayments into corporate profits, all the while devising ways to actually deny healthcare to their subscribers.

The problems with Medicare Advantage are well-documented. Unlike actual Medicare, which pays for healthcare........

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