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President Donald Trump announced an executive order to “strengthen, defend, and protect Medicare for all of our senior citizens." The president said his order would help Medicare beneficiaries access the "latest and greatest medical devices and therapies," reduce unnecessary regulations -- freeing up doctors and nurses to spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork -- and protect seniors from fraud and abuse. "I'm directing Secretary Azar to crack down on criminal cheaters and dishonest providers who rob Medicare of the funds you have and the money that you paid into the system all of your lives," Trump said. He also spoke about plans to lower drug prices through importing drugs from Canada and other counties. Trump also suggested that drugmakers might in fact be involved in “the hoax." "They're very powerful, spend a lot of money... I wouldn't be surprised if some of the nonsense that ... I go through, I wouldn't be surprised if it was some of these industries, like pharmaceuticals, that we take on." HHS Secretary Alex Azar explained that the new order would direct him to propose and to implement a rule to grow the Medicare Advantage, and provide "more diverse and affordable plan options." The order gives the secretary one year to propose regulations to that end. The new rule would encourage innovation in Medicare Advantage structures and plan designs, reduce barriers to accessing Medicare medical savings accounts, and promote "innovations and supplemental benefits and telehealth services," Azar said. "We would have to include a payment model through our Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that adjusts supplemental Medicare Advantage benefits to allow Medicare beneficiaries to actually share more directly in the savings from the program, including through cash or monetary rebates, which would create more incentives for them to seek high-value care." Lastly, the rule would look to ensure that the fee-for-service Medicare program isn't given advantages over Medicare Advantage, he added, "that we're not steering people into fee-for-service, as opposed to giving them a genuine choice of Medicare Advantage or fee-for-service." The administration would achieve this last goal by examining the enrollment process to see if adequate information on Medicare Advantage plans has been offered through "various plan-finder tools" and "make sure there's no financial disincentive" to Medicare Advantage versus fee-for-service, Azar said. As is typical of executive orders, the plan issued by the White House didn't include specifics, but rather left it to HHS to flesh out the details in the coming months. The order also didn't mention funding for programs likely to cost money, such as stepped-up efforts to attack waste, fraud, and abuse. Source: https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicare/82559