Auto-enrollment in Medicare Advantage isn’t a nudge. It’s a trap

The Trump administration is reportedly weighing a policy that would make private Medicare Advantage (MA) the default enrollment option for every new Medicare beneficiary. Officials are billing it as a technocratic nudge toward better, more coordinated care. If that were truly the goal, payment models already lowering costs through the coordination of care could be more aggressively expanded in traditional Medicare. Instead, MA auto-enrollment is a stealth effort to privatize Medicare by making for-profit insurance the path of least resistance for millions of seniors who never asked for it.