Forty-one Democratic members of the U.S. House and Senate urged Republican leaders to forgo Medicaid cuts and instead  “address waste, fraud, and abuse by private, for-profit insurance companies” in a May 7 letter.

In carrying out their “directive to cut federal health care spending,” the authors write, these lawmakers should reduce waste, fraud, and abuse like upcoding by for-profit insurance companies, which they call “a growing threat to the Medicare program” that results in overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans.

LeadingAge lent its support to the approach described in the letter as a mechanism to avoid potentially devastating Medicaid cuts while protecting the Medicare Trust Fund.