The annual open enrollment period for Medicare Advantage passed just about a week ago, and as it did, an interesting thing happened: A benign and very academic- and intellectual-sounding group called the Center for Economic Policy and Research pushed out a negative piece about Medicare Advantage. The report was written back in September before the open enrollment period began (and ended)—but it managed to get a write-up just as the open enrollment period closed—which is curious if the point of the report was to inform consumers before they made their enrollment decision.

Even more curious is who funds the Center for Economic Policy and Research, given what the Center has to say. Although Medicare Advantage is hugely popular with senior citizens and should be with taxpayers, given that it is a big cost-saver over traditional Medicare, the Center for Economic Policy and Research really, really dislikes it. Really, really, really. 

And the Center really, really, really likes traditional fee-for-service Medicare—you know, the thing that progressives are trying to establish as the health care system for all Americans in the wake of Obamacare turning out to be a disaster and other efforts at health care reform stalling out. It turns out that the donor list for the Center is a veritable who’s who of big lefty foundations. Here's a screenshot of their current donor list:

A few names will immediately jump out at conservatives, starting with the National Education Association. That’s the biggest teachers’ union in the country.

Less known, but even more important names are the Tides Foundation and the Bernard & Anne Spitzer Family Charitable Trust.

Tides has, over the years, taken donations from a bevy of lefty donors perhaps most famously including Barbra Streisand; it had over $1.4 billion in assets in 2022. Another big backer has been George Soros, who, coincidentally, has also donated to the Center.

But what is the Bernard & Anne Spitzer Family Charitable Trust? I’m glad you asked. It turns out it’s the family trust established by Eliot Spitzer’s parents (yes, that Eliot Spitzer).

When you consider the donors, it’s unsurprising that the Center would be advocating for a policy position that shuts down a private alternative to Medicare; what progressives want is to push more Americans into Medicare and ultimately, enact Medicare-for-All—or at least a “public option,” which would probably lay the foundation for Medicare-for-All to be enacted—nationwide. This is not likely to happen while seniors keep choosing Medicare Advantage (and a majority of them do) and while public officials keep backing it because they know that Medicare Advantage is better for taxpayers in a time of high debt and deficits. But that’s what the left wants, so intellectual- and academic-sounding reports going after Medicare Advantage funded by the left will continue to crop up.

What’s perhaps most interesting here is how healthcare providers—think big hospital systems—seem to be lining up with the left on this issue. 

During the open enrollment period, there was a massive uptick in articles covering hospital systems’ displeasure with Medicare Advantage because purportedly Medicare Advantage plans pay health care providers, who we have recently learned did not in fact do financially badly at all out of the pandemic, “too little” as compared to traditional fee-for-service Medicare. What this actually means is that providers prefer the option that pays them more—traditional Medicare—even though that payment mechanism is entirely taxpayer-funded, and does little to limit cost (why the providers like it).

Traditional Medicare is what is driving debt and deficits and proving financially unsustainable. Per Money, "Medicare trustees say the Part A program will begin running deficits again in 2025, drawing down the trust fund until it depletes in 2031. After that date, the program would not be bringing in enough money to fully pay out Part A benefits."

At the same time, Medicare Advantage is offering seniors—and taxpayers—an alternative that preserves healthcare access while affording additional benefits traditional Medicare does not provide—but makes the math work by having healthcare provider networks. That is not what hospital systems want, and it is not what the left wants—even though in vastly more socialized healthcare systems than the US (take the United Kingdom, for example) costs are absolutely minimized by limiting patients’ access to rearms of healthcare providers.

Republicans lately have seemed to be more susceptible to arguments driven by hospitals and by academic, intellectual-sounding arguments from the likes of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, that maybe Medicare Advantage isn’t actually advantageous over traditional fee-for-service Medicare. This is a major reversal from the era when the GOP was committed to fighting Obamacare because, among other things, it cut Medicare Advantage—which amounted to cutting Medicare for a ton of beneficiaries. A little caution might be warranted here, considering the very lefty philosophical and hardened financial interests at play in this debate.