CBO vindicates Medicare Advantage companies victimized by Dem demogougery

CBO says Medicare Advantage seniors WILL suffer from lower benefits, to say nothing of the higher premiums, and the departure of their carriers from the market that will also result from the cut:

"However, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, in testimony before Baucus’s own Senate Finance Committee, said, in fact, the cuts in Medicare Advantage would result in a loss of benefits and lower enrollment.

'The effect of the original chairman’s mark on Medicare Advantage enrollment in 2019, would be a reduction of roughly 2.7 million people or 20 percent of the enrollment,' Elmendorf said Tuesday. '[T]he competitive bidding process would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.'

Elmendorf said that, by 2019, the value of extra benefits provided by private insurers but not by the government, would be cut in half if health reform is passed.

'The additional benefits would be smaller: $42 in additional benefits per month in 2019, and it’s a little less than half of what we would project under current law,' he said."