Two top National Association of Insurance Commissioners officials are supporting efforts to control Medicare Advantage plan enrollee lobbying programs.
Roger Sevigny, the president of the NAIC, Kansas City, Mo., and Sandy Praeger, the chair of the NAIC's Health Insurance and Managed Care Committee, say they agree with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that the current wave of mailings about federal health reform legislation should be given close scrutiny.
"State insurance commissioners have written and testified on numerous occasions about the deplorable marketing and sales abuses facing Medicare beneficiaries we have witnessed first-hand in the Medicare Advantage marketplace," Sevigny and Praeger write in a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the highest ranking Republican on the Committee.
"State regulators believe these troublesome practices are directly tied to excess payments made to Medicare Advantage plans, and support changes made to federal law that would rein in these abuses," Sevigny and Praeger writes.
