Strong Growth From April to May In Medicare Advantage

May 13, 2024

I decided to continue my Medicare Advantage (MA) monthly enrollment blogs because of continuing strong month-over-month increases. While we are outside of the two regular annual enrollment windows, increases in MA are still strong given the aging of America and the ability of some populations, such as dual eligibles, to continue to make changes throughout the year.

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 about 86,000 from March 1 to April 1
By about 100,000 from April 1 to May 1, a 0.3% increase.

Enrollment in MA has now hit 33.985 million. The growth from January 1 to May 1 represents an additional 1.53% increase or 512,000 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 May 1, HMOs grew by about 169,000, with PPOs growing about 339,000. HMOs grew over 39,000 from April to May, with PPOs growing over 60,000 in that timeframe.

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 154,000 from January to May. Enrollment grew over 46,000 from April to May.

As was the case year-over-year, many of the Big MA plans continued to struggle. From April to May, only CVS Health/Aetna and Humana scored major monthly gains. Molina’s gains were from an acquistion.

From January to May, CVS Health/Aetna continued its powerhouse growth, with gains of about 306,000 members. This comes off a January 2023 to January 2024 growth of about 772,000. From January to May, CVS Health/Aetna has registered almost 60% of all growth in the MA program. It grew by over 63,000 from April to May. But CVS Health just reported troubling financial news, in part due to utilization on the stellar growth it has had of late.

Humana has rebounded well from a poor open enrollment season. It has added over 85,000 lives from January to May, with almost 25,000 from April to May.