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Satisfaction surveys show the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries are happy with their coverage and customer service. This applies to both Medicare Advantage and original FFS Medicare 1/7 https://www.ma-pdpcahps.org/globalassets/ma-pdp/comparative-data/2019-medicare-cahps-scores-by-state.pdf
Polls also show the popularity of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Medicaid program. 2/7 https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-the-affordable-care-act-and-the-supreme-court/ and https://www.kff.org/medicaid/poll-finding/data-note-5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-medicaid/
All these programs are run by @cmsgov, an agency with outlays of approx $1.25 trillion in FY2020 or around 19% of total Fed outlays. CMS is somewhat unknown except in health policy and business circles. My parents still are only vaguely aware of CMS and I used to work there
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One would think popular programs with large spend would enjoy significant and bipartisan support to have the administrative resources necessary to best serve the public and maintain program integrity. But the reality is that CMS only has little over 6k employees. 4/7
The staffing and IT budgets at CMS have not grown commensurate with the increased scale of responsibilities and program complexity imposed by statute and now the #COVID emergency. See the budget justification docs here https://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Agency-Information/PerformanceBudget 5/7
To put this in context, a typical local or regional health system will have more FTEs than CMS. For example, Johns Hopkins Medicine has nearly 27,000 or more than 4 times the CMS headcount. 6/7 https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/human_resources/about/employee_numbers.html
CMS deserves the support and resources it needs to do the best possible job serving America and managing our tax dollars. 7/7 @AppropsDems @SenShelby @RoyBlunt @Transition46
