Medicare Advantage plans still plugging along with enrollment growth
A quick blog to tell you about enrollment growth in Medicare Advantage (MA) from May 2025 to June 2025.
MA growth slowed down from 2024 to 2025 because of the financial woes of the MA industry. But the rolls are still growing due to aging and the popularity and value of MA compared with the archaic traditional Medicare (fee-for-service) program.
What do the latest statistics show?
Growth from January 2024 to February 2025 was 4.39% or 1.468 million. (I used February 2025 because of issues with the January 2025 statistics). Enrollment in MA reached 34.941M in February 2025. In June 2025, it reached 35.357M. MA enrollment grew about 115K from May to June and about 416K from February to June.
How did Big MA do?
From January 2024 to February 2025, Big Plan MA enrollment performed very poorly because of retrenchment among some of these plans. Big MA grew by about 780K or 3.1%. Big MA enrollment hit 26.348M. This compares with about 688K growth or 8.7% for all other MA plans. All other MA plans grew to 8.593M in February 2025.
Big MA’s penetration dropped from 76.4% in January 2024 to 75.4% in February 2025. Big MA has grown about 299K lives from February to June 2025, or about 72% of growth in that timeframe. This trails Big MA’s overall penetration. Big MA growth in June was about 90K. But 77K of that growth came from UnitedHealthcare. Because of United’s major financial troubles, the company announced it is terminating most MA commissions as of July 1. Other companies have announced similar moves. This will help stem additional Big MA growth throughout 2025. This likely means an even bigger share of growth will go to non-Big MA plans in the balance of the year.
UnitedHealthcare grew by about 77K in June 2025 (a major rebound from 24K growth in May) and about 239K since February. But, as noted, ending most commissions will mean much less growth in the balance of 2025.
CVS grew by about 1K in June and about 34K since February. Kaiser grew by about 4K in June and 17K since February.
Humana grew by about 3K in June but has contracted by about 22K since February. Elevance Health grew by about 1K in June and has dropped about 28K since February. Centene dropped by about 3K in June and a total of about 21K since February.
In March, Cigna closed its sale of its Medicare assets, including its over 700K MA lives, to Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). As such, HCSC jumped from about 239K in March to 957K in April. It is now the 7th largest MA player. It grew by about 5K in May and about 3K in June.
Special Needs Plans explosive growth
Special Needs Plans (SNPs) (including MMPs) continued to see a healthy increase in enrollment. From January 2024 to February 2025, SNPs grew to 7.553 million, a gain of about 646K or 9.35%. SNP enrollment grew about 264K in the enrollment season. But this growth is still down from the January 2023 to January 2024 period. In that period, SNPs added 1.154 million or 20.07%.
SNPs grew an amazing 102K from May to June 2025. From February to June, SNPs added 245K more lives. Almost 90% of all MA growth from May to June was SNP enrollment. SNP growth is almost 60% of all MA growth from February to June.
PPOs vs. HMOs
Over the years, PPOs began growing and competing well with HMOs in terms of raw numbers as well as percentage growth. While PPOs’ sheer number and percentage growth was beating HMOs over the past several years, that trend changed from January 2024 to February 2025. From January 2023 to January 2024, HMOs grew about 853K (4.8%) and PPOs 1.861 million (14.8%).
But from January 2024 to February 2025, HMOs grew more than PPOs in terms of numbers and percentage: HMOs up about 882K (4.7%) vs. PPOs up about 580K (4%). HMOs grew by about 480K during the enrollment season, while PPOs contracted by about 58K.
From February to June, HMOs grew by about 255K while PPOs grew by 157K. From May to June, HMOs grew by about 83K compared with 31K for PPOs.
#medicareadvantage #enrollment #cms #healthplans #coverage
— Marc S. Ryan
