Medicare payment rates increase under Trump

Health insurers who sell Medicare Advantage plans will get approximately $ 30 billion in taxpayers next year.

President Trump’s Medicare Agency finalized on Monday a rule that would increase reference payment rates to private merchant plans by 5.1% for 2026. It was higher than the increase in payment offered by the Biden Administration by 2.2% – and well above what Wall Street investors expected.

The increase is higher because the Medicare actuaries have used more updated federal data on the spending models of people registered in the traditional Medicare program, which is used to calculate the amount of medicare plans to cover their members.