While Medicare Advantage grew from 2024 to 2025, the lackluster performance during the 2025 enrollment season shows the financial woes of the industry.
About The Podcast:
Millions of Americans feel confused and frustrated in their search for quality healthcare coverage.
Between out-of-control costs, countless inefficiencies, a lack of affordable universal access, and little focus on wellness and prevention, the system is clearly in dire need of change.
Hosted by healthcare policy and technology expert Marc S. Ryan, the Healthcare Labyrinth Podcast offers accessible, incisive deep dives on the most pressing issues and events in American healthcare.
Marc seeks to help Americans become wiser consumers and navigate the healthcare maze with more confidence and certainty through The Healthcare Labyrinth website and his book of the same name.
Marc is an unconventional Republican who believes that affordable universal access is a wise and prudent investment. He recommends common-sense solutions to reform American healthcare.
Tune in every week as Marc examines the latest developments in the space, offering analysis, insights, and predictions on the changing state of healthcare in America.
About The Episode:
On this episode, Marc discusses the 2025 Medicare Advantage enrollment season. While MA grew from 2024 to 2025, the lackluster performance during the 2025 enrollment season shows the financial woes of the industry.
Key Takeaways:
2025 Medicare Advantage enrollment season results were delayed due to issues at CMS and the new administration.
While MA grew from 2024 to 2025, the statistics show the financial woes of the industry.
Growth year over year was just 4.4%, about half of the average of the last 4 years.
Benefit and footprint contractions by Big MA players caused the lower growth.
MA remains attractive, however, due to the great value proposition compared with the traditional program.
As of March, over 35 million are now in MA.
Non-Big MA plan enrollment grew at a healthy pace year over year – about 688K or 8.7% from January 2024 to February 2025. This compares to just 3.1% for Big MA plans.
Some Big MA plans shed lives to financially realign.
Special Needs Plans continued to see huge growth, up over 9% from 2024 to 2025. This is about half of the growth from 2023 to 2024.
Plans contracted benefit offerings for both HMOs and PPOs.
After PPOs grew in prior years more than HMOs, HMOs beat PPOs in growth from 2024 to 2025. Many plans shed PPO enrollment due to their financial pictures with the more expensive product.
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Resources
The Healthcare Labyrinth: A Guide to Navigating Health Plans and Fixing American Health Insurance
