Ocasio-Cortez Questions Secretary Kennedy Decision to Send Billions to Insurance Giants Under Investigation

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Washington, D.C. - Today, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) questioned Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy for his decision to send billions of taxpayer dollars to insurance giants under investigation for corporate fraud during a hearing in the Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Last June, Representative Ocasio-Cortez questioned HHS Secretary Kennedy about corporate fraud in the Medicare Advantage program. She discussed how UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and other for-profit health insurance companies with Medicare Advantage plans defraud the federal government by nearly $80 billion each year. Last year, Secretary Kennedy committed to looking into that fraud.

In January 2026, CMS proposed a 0.09% increase to Medicare Advantage reimbursement rates for 2027, a near-flat payment update. This drew immediate backlash from industry trade and front groups like America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Better Medicare Alliance, as well as dragging down stock prices with major MA players like UnitedHealth Group, Humana, CVS Health, and Elevance Health all seeing a drop.

Due to industry pressure, two weeks ago, Secretary Kennedy decided to increase payment rates by 2.48%, which will give these for-profit health insurers an additional $13 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2027. When this final rate notice was announced, major insurers saw their stocks skyrocket.

Find Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks as delivered below:

“How are you doing, Mr. Secretary?

Good. Thank you for asking.

No, of course, of course.

I'm not sure if you remember our last chat about a year ago where we talked about Medicare Advantage. But, you know, I think one area of agreement that we have, I hope, is that these insurance companies are fleecing the public. Right. Can we agree on that?

Absolutely.

And they are- I mean, it's highway robbery on the American people, on people who are sick, on seniors. We're on the same page about that, right?

Yes.

And last year I brought up Medicare, the Medicare Advantage program, to you because these corporations like UnitedHealthCare, Aetna are known to be defrauding the public. And really, we know that with Medicare Advantage, it's to the tune of about $80 billion. And the Department of Justice has, in fact, opened an actual-

You mentioned United last time.

So you remember this, right? 

Yes.

Okay. I'm glad that we're able to, kind of jog the memory on there. And we chatted about this and we actually chatted about it afterwards, too. And so we know this, we're all on the same page here. United, CVS/Aetna, they’re defrauding the American public to the tune of $80 billion a year. We know that they're doing this to the public. You know it, I know it. We've even had some bipartisan chat about this. 

And so I was surprised to see about two weeks ago, you had decided to give them another $13 billion. And it was used through the mechanism of the MA reimbursement rates. But I want to know, why did you do that?

And first of all, I agree with you on everything that you said. We, you know, we have to look at the reimbursements that the industry get, which they said there's been a 5% increase in cost, and that if we didn't give them the full 5% they were going to lose, they were- and it would impair patient choice, particularly in some regions of the country the industry would leave. We gave them a 2% raise.

And I, I hear what you're saying, Mr. Secretary, that the industry is saying that they're increasing these costs, but the industry is defrauding the public. So we know they're lying. We know they're lying through even their mechanisms. They are upcoding. They are telling us, the public, the government, Medicare, our systems, that people are sicker than they are so that they can get more money. They're lowering their reimbursement rates. They're increasing denial. So we know that these folks are lying. We know that they're bad actors. And if I'm hearing you correctly, we are giving them more money because they're saying that they need it?

Can I answer the question?

Yeah.

First of all, I appreciate everything you've done and you speaking out about upcoding. We are ending upcoding. We're using AI now to detect it, to prosecute it, and to end it. Yeah, they're lying. But my job as HHS Secretary, I have to balance the impact on patients if there are no options in those areas. So we do- We have to do a lot to verify- We don't trust. We do a lot to verify.

And I hear what you're saying. I mean, even when you talked about that 2% is something that I found interesting too, because that 2.48% wasn't initially what you were going to go for. You had announced in January that, in fact, CMS had proposed an increase of 0.09%.

Yeah.

Which would have essentially kept payments flat at minimum, to these corporations like United and Aetna that are robbing us. And so, there was an interesting amendment that you had made. We've got the experts saying, okay, even when you start looking at that inflation rate or that cost rate, even that at most is 0.09%. But then it seemed as though there was some industry backlash. And now we're at 2.48%. We're giving them $13 billion when they are stealing $80 billion a year as it is. 

I say we let them eat it. Why not?

Well, you can see from what we originally published what our intention was: to give them essentially nothing. And we got a huge blowback, not only from the industry, but providers and everybody else who said we are going to experience closures. We're going to experience places where you cannot get insurance. It is going to leave all these patients high and dry. We did our own investigation. And, you know, you can look at health care-

Representative, time’s up.

I really appreciate you giving me a chance to answer questions. I can't thank you enough for that. ”

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