Trump Medicare Director Floats MA Auto-Enrollment
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Chris Klomp, Trump's Medicare director, said Thursday that CMS is mulling models to automatically enroll Medicare beneficiaries into Medicare Advantage plans.
- CMS is also evaluating auto-enrollment into accountable care organizations, including those participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.
- The proposal echoes a controversial idea previously touted in the conservative Project 2025 policy blueprint.
- Beneficiaries could still opt into a different insurance arrangement under the proposed models, preserving some consumer choice.
- Under current rules, beneficiaries who make no selection default to traditional fee-for-service Medicare — the default Klomp argued lacks a 'long-term, secular relationship between the beneficiary, the patient, and their provider.'
Why it matters: Under current rules, beneficiaries who don't actively choose are covered by traditional fee-for-service Medicare; the proposal would flip that default toward private Medicare Advantage plans or ACOs. Klomp framed the shift as building a 'long-term, secular relationship' between patient and provider, but the idea originates from the controversial Project 2025 blueprint — making the still-early-stage 'feasibility study' politically charged from the start.
