Strong Growth Closes Out Major Enrollment Seasons In Medicare Advantage

April 18, 2024

I have posted several blogs now on the exciting news that Medicare Advantage (MA) growth has been very robust not only in the traditional enrollment period from October 15 to December 2023, but also in the supplemental period from January 1 to March 31, 2024. While growth will continue throughout the year (due to aging primarily), we should see a slowing. So, this will conclude my enrollment blogs for the year unless we see some strange developments.

So what have we seen. As I have reported, growth from January 2023 to January 2024 was a robust 8.7% increase or 2.674 million. Enrollment in MA reached 30.799 million in January. Since that time, enrollment has continued to climb:

By about 183,000 from January 1 to February 1
By about 144,000 from February 1 to March 1
By and out 86,000 from March 1 to April 1

The growth from January 1 to April 1 represents an additional 1.2% increase or 413,000 lives. MA enrollment has now increased beyond 51% of all Medicare beneficiaries.

As we saw with January 2023 to January 2024, PPO growth now significantly outstrips HMO growth. From January 1 to April 1, HMOs grew by about 129,000, with PPOs growing about 279,000.

Special Needs Plans (SNPs) continued to do very well too. After growing about 1.154 million from January 2023 to January 2024, SNPs grew by another approximate 108,000 from January to April.

As was the case year-over-year, many of the Big MA plans continued to struggle. From March to April, only CVS Health/Aetna scored major traction again on growth. All others recorded modest gains or reductions.

From January to April, CVS Health/Aetna continues its powerhouse growth, with gains of about 242,000 members. This comes off a January 2023 to January 2024 growth of about 772,000. From January to April, CVS Health/Aetna has registered almost 60% of all growth in the MA program.

While both United and Humana had good January 2023 to January 2024 growth, they both struggled a bit during the October-December enrollment period. United continued to struggle post January 1 with enrollments, while Humana has rebounded a bit. Note that Molina’s growth is strictly tied to its acquisition of Bright Health’s MA lives. Otherwise, it would have contracted from January to April.