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With open enrollment underway, Medicare beneficiaries have until December 7th to review and select their coverage for 2024. They also have a lot of options to choose from, as two new KFF analyses show.
For 2024, the average Medicare beneficiary has access to 43 Medicare Advantage plans and can choose from plans offered by 8 firms. Among the majority of Medicare Advantage plans that cover prescription drugs, 66 percent will charge no premium in addition to the monthly Medicare Part B premium. As in previous years, the vast majority of Medicare Advantage plans will offer supplemental benefits, including fitness, dental, vision, and hearing benefits.
Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage is available for people with Medicare who enroll in private plans, either a stand-alone prescription drug plan (PDP) for people in traditional Medicare, or a Medicare Advantage plan that covers all Medicare benefits, including prescription drugs (MA-PD). This issue brief provides an overview of Part D plan availability and premiums in 2024 and key trends over time.
Published in the journal Health Affairs, this analysis compared measures of access to care, cost concerns, and satisfaction with care for beneficiaries younger than age sixty-five versus those ages sixty-five and older, using the 2019 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey.
In this JAMA Forum column, KFF’s Larry Levitt examines the growing role of private insurance companies in public programs, including Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care, and the tradeoffs that result.
Medicare Advantage is the rapidly growing private plan alternative to traditional Medicare that provides coverage to approximately half of Medicare beneficiaries. On Tuesday, March 21, three experts joined series moderator Larry Levitt in a 45-minute discussion on Medicare Advantage, addressing such questions as: What has driven the growth in Medicare Advantage enrollment? What are the implications of enrollment being concentrated in a few insurance firms? Is the federal government overpaying plans? What would the new rules and proposed changes do, and how would they affect beneficiaries?
A new analysis of health insurers’ 2021 financial data shows that insurers continue to report much higher gross margins per enrollee in the Medicare Advantage market than in other health insurance markets. The analysis examines insurers’ financial data in the Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed care, individual (non-group), and fully insured group (employer) markets.
Using health insurer financial data for 2023, we find that in 2023, per enrollee gross margins were highest in the Medicare Advantage market, and medical loss ratios were lowest in the individual insurance market. Across most markets, gross margins have been relatively stable in recent years.
Recent announcements by the Administration to improve the accuracy of payments and improve program integrity of Medicare Advantage are unlikely to have a major impact on the program, the insurance industry or beneficiaries, given relatively generous payments to plans and the robustness of the market for private Medicare plans.
This Health Policy 101 chapter explores Medicare, a federal health insurance program covering more than 68 million people, established in 1965 for people age 65 or older and later expanded to cover people under age 65 with long-term disabilities. In addition to detailing Medicare eligibility, coverage, and spending, the chapter examines the increased role of private plans in providing benefits and the financing challenges posed by increasing health care costs and an aging population.
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