A new Medicare Advantage advocacy organization has emerged with the backing of several major health systems, adding more provider voices to the increasingly crowded debate over the future of the public-private program.
The Alliance for Medicare announced its launch this month alongside its flagship initiative, the Coalition to Improve Medicare Advantage. The new group — not to be confused with the insurer-backed Better Medicare Alliance — counts Ascension, Community Health Systems, PAM Health, Encompass Health and ScionHealth among its founding members.
The new cohort comes as hospitals’ frustrations with MA continue to build around the country over denial rates, prior authorization practices and payment delays from insurers facing their own financial pressures. In turn, scores of hospitals and health systems have turned to a strategy of dropping select MA contracts (or even cutting all of them entirely) over the last few years, resulting in a disruption of coverage for millions of beneficiaries each enrollment period.
Scott Styles, executive director of the new alliance, spent part of the 2000s overseeing federal affairs at AHIP, the trade group representing every major health insurer. During that time, MA still represented a small share of the total Medicare population, having since grown to encompass around 55% of all enrollees as of 2026. Mr. Styles told Becker’s the political dynamics around MA have shifted compared to its early days as the lawmakers who built the program have mostly left Congress.
“A lot of the Republicans who were involved in the changes that really created the growth in MA have really been coming back with questions,” he said. “They’re hearing from all these providers about what has changed in Medicare Advantage and about complaints.”
“Now you’ve got a new group of members, a lot of physicians, who have a totally different experience. They don’t have the ownership some of the older members did with MA,” he added.
That generational shift in Congress is creating an opening for more comprehensive MA reform than prior authorization bills alone, which up until now have represented the primary (and largely stalled) legislative response to the increasingly louder provider and patient complaints about the program.
“The goal here is to have some statutory and legislative options to work in parallel with regulatory options,” Mr. Styles said.
The new alliance is supportive of reforms outlined in the Medicare Advantage Improvement Act, which was introduced in April and has already gained the backing of St. Louis-based Ascension. The legislation would streamline prior authorization, increase transparency, align coverage standards closer to traditional Medicare and limit the use of artificial intelligence in claims denials.
“Our focus is to make sure that the commitment to beneficiaries remains true — that they get the same level of coverage that someone in traditional Medicare would,” Mr. Styles said. “That’s where I think we’ve seen some slippage.”
He pointed to integrated plans, or those owned and administered directly by health systems, as a model worth learning from.
“They seem to have a better patient experience,” he said. “So what are the integrated plans doing differently that’s not causing problems for patients?”
The alliance is provider-led for now, though Mr. Styles said it is open to conversations with insurers, starting with the integrated health systems. On the legislative timeline, he acknowledged that meaningful changes will likely extend into 2027.
The group is also positioning itself as distinct from other advocacy organizations working adjacent hospital terrain. Where organizations like the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals carry multiple priorities, Mr. Styles said the alliance is singularly focused on MA. And unlike some 501(c)(4) organizations that have faced criticism for advertising without disclosing their backers, the alliance says its membership and activities will be publicly visible as a 501(c)(6).
“We’re not just a vehicle for ads,” Mr. Styles said. “There will be actual lobbying efforts and a big advocacy push, and it’ll all be very public. We’re not trying to hide who our members are.”
The longer-term goal, he added, is convening stakeholders rather than entrenching all the different sides.
“We want to make sure that everyone understands this is an open dialog. If we could sit down in a room with Dr. Oz and the CMS team, with a group of insurers, integrated plans and providers, just to work through these issues — I think that’s the ultimate goal.”
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