Participants in a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Medicare Advantage fee-for-service plans took turns criticizing the plans' marketing methods and cost.
One committee member, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., compared the current Medicare private FFS market to "Dodge City before the marshal's showed up."
Dr. Albert Fisk, medical director of the Everett Clinic in Snohomish County, Wash., testified that Medicare private FFS plans are so much harder to deal with than other private Medicare plans that the clinic has decided to eventually stop taking Medicare private FFS patients.
Mark Miller, executive director of the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee, says private plan compensation changes have undermined the goal of making Medicare more efficient.
"Payment increases have been so large that plans no longer need to be efficient to attract enrollees," Miller said.
No insurance industry representatives appeared.
The closest thing the industry got to a defense came from Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Senate Finance Committee chairman, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who acknowledged that the Medicare private FFS plans have been popular.
Baucus noted that enrollment in private FFS plans has grown by 1,000% in just over 2 years.
In Montana, more than 90% of Medicare Advantage enrollees are in private FFS plans, rather than in health maintenance organization or preferred provider organization plans, Baucus said.
