Politico’s Marin Cogan and James Hohmann try and “truth-squad” Rep. Paul Ryan’s claims at the February 25th Blair House health summit writing:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) claimed that under the Democrats’ plan, millions of seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plans.

Not quite.

According to health policy experts, it’s fair to say that if the Democrats have their way, the benefits provided by Medicare Advantage will be reduced — which means that a number of seniors might choose not to enroll in the program in the future. That doesn’t mean people are going to “lose” their plans, exactly — just that fewer are likely to enroll.

Cogin and Hohmann need to read the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) report on the Senate bill more closely. CMS found:

Lower benchmarks would reduce MA rebates to plans and thereby result in less generous benefit packages. We estimate that in 2015 when the competitive benchmarks would be fully phased in, enrollment in MA plans would decreased by 33 percent (from its projected level of 13.7 million under current law to 9.2 million under the proposal).

Politico makes it sound like those seniors currently enrolled in MA would see no changes in their health care while only future potential enrollees would be discouraged from joining MA plans because of reduced benefits. This is a false reading of the CMS report.

CMS is saying that all seniors currently enrolled in MA plans will see their health benefits reduced due to lower payments from the federal government. The CMS then estimates that these lower benefits will cause total enrollment in MA plans to fall by 33% by 2014.

In other words, Paul Ryan was dead right, and Politico was dead wrong.