As the healthcare industry braces for whatever impacts tariffs may have on operations, an impossible task to predict accurately given the flux on that matter, providers also are welcoming a new head of CMS, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who was confirmed by the Senate last week. There is some uncertainty on how the Trump Administration will treat healthcare providers overall, specifically in the senior care industry, with some positives coming from the end of the minimum staffing mandate and an overall friendlier business climate, versus the threat of increased scrutiny on Medicare and Medicaid spending with respect to fraud and abuse potentially contributing to falling revenues.
When reading the tea leaves on Dr. Oz, one of the few things that jumped out with regard to policy was that he was a fan of the Medicare Advantage program. And just days after his confirmation, it was announced that Medicare Advantage plans would receive on average a 5.06% payment increase for 2026, up from a 4.33% rate increase from the Biden Administration proposed in January and an increase of 2.83 percentage points since the Calendar Year 2026 Advance Notice. It was primarily driven by an increase in the current estimate of the growth in benchmarks used to determine payment for MA plans. The announcement somehow did not overshadow the economic events dominating the nightly news.
