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“How’s the knee?” one bowler asked another across the lanes. Their conversation in a Super Bowl ad focused on a Biden administration proposal that one bowler warned another would “cut Medicare Advantage.” “Somebody in Washington is smarter than that,” the friend responded, before a narrator urged viewers to call the White House to voice their displeasure. The multimillion dollar ad buy is part of an aggressive campaign by the health insurance industry and its allies to stop the Biden proposal. It would significantly lower payments — by billions of dollars a year — to Medicare Advantage, the private plans that now cover about half of the government’s health program for older Americans. (Abelson and Sanger-Katz, 3/22)

Ten days after the State of the Union, the National Republican Senatorial Committee came out with a new ad targeting Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a swing-state Democrat up for re-election in 2024, over Medicare. “You earned your retirement benefits,” the ad says. “You followed the rules. You paid into the system. But Jacky Rosen wants to take them away. Rosen backed Joe Biden’s extreme agenda, putting your Medicare and Social Security at risk. “Tell Jacky Rosen – hands off our benefits,” the ad concludes. (Birenbaum, 3/22)

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday called for “common sense” reforms to federal entitlement programs, namely Social Security and Medicare, weighing in on what is set to be a wedge issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. “If we act in this moment with the support of this generation, we can introduce common sense reforms that will never touch anyone who is in retirement, or anyone who will retire in the next 25 years,” Pence told an audience of college students at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. “It’ll just take courage to do it, and that’s where your generation will come in.” (Neukam, 3/22)

Hundreds of thousands of Americans’ personal information is at risk after Medicare’s data was breached. Now, lawmakers want answers. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., sent a letter demanding a range of documents and communications from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Lawmakers said that in October of last year Healthcare Management Solutions, a subcontractor to ASRC Federal Data Solutions, which works for CMS, suffered a ransomware attack. (Harper, 3/21)