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Lobbying in Washington, DC for Important NRLN Issues on March 17 and 18, Bill Kadereit, NRLN President, Jay Kuhnie, NRLN Vice President – Legislative Affairs, joined Alyson Parker, NRLN Executive Director, in Washington, DC to advocate important NRLN issues.
NRLN Review, Summary for March 2025
The NRLN Review provides a monthly report on National Retiree Legislative Network actions, events in Congress and important retirement news.
Lobbying in Washington, DC for Important NRLN Issues on March 17 and 18, Bill Kadereit, NRLN President, Jay Kuhnie, NRLN Vice President – Legislative Affairs, joined Alyson Parker, NRLN Executive Director, in Washington, DC to advocate important NRLN issues.
- Get the NRLN pension protection statute on de-risking (Pension Risk Transfer) into a bill and passed. Derisking is when pension plans are switched to an insurance company annuity. Foremost among the protections the NRLN wants is our statute proposal that an annuity contract must include full reinsurance of pension payments.
- Get Congress and/or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to enforce existing federal laws for Medicare Guaranteed Issue Rights (GIR) and Special Enrollment Period (SEP). When healthcare insurance ceases or is terminated federal law requires plan participants to be informed of their GIR and eligibility for an SEP. A GIR prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage or overcharging an applicant for a Medigap or MA policy, regardless of pre-existing health conditions. A SEP allows one to shop for the best deal possible for a Medigap or MA plan.
- While on The Hill we heard considerable talk about the actions the administration is taking on staffing reductions to Social Security and Medicare. We are concerned about the outcry that the Social Security Administration is cutting 7,000 employees, closing offices and requiring seniors to go to an SSA office to sign up and verify personal identity.
A March 27 announcement stated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) cuts will be 300 of the 10,000 employees to be eliminated by the Health and Human Services (HHS) agency but will not impact Medicare and Medicaid services. The NRLN will be addressing the impact of Social Security and CMS employee reductions on retiree services and benefits in April and May.
Meetings were held with Committee staff members for the Senate’s Committee on Finance and Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. On the House side there were meetings with Committee staff members for the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Energy and Commerce plus a staff member for a Representative who has often introduced bills on retirement healthcare.
Bill, Jay and Alyson also met with staff members at the CMS headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, a suburb of western Baltimore County about the need for federal action on GIR notifications. They noted that leading insurance companies including Cigna terminated plan coverage for 1.1 million Medicare Advantage (MA) plan participants in January 2025. About 60% of them did not receive notice letters and many letters did not include GIR protection. According to insurance companies, the reason MA plans were terminated is that they were losing money. Cigna sold its entire MA plan business, closing the deal in March 2025.
The NRLN has said that private MA plans have failed to compete financially with Original Medicare Fee-for Service and that as MA participants get older and need more care the situation will worsen on dropping enrollees. CMS must step-up to protect GIR rights. It is inevitable that the cost squeeze will either force an explosion of MA terminations or an explosion of out-of-pocket, copay, premium and deductible costs that will be dumped in MA plan participants laps.
