In my January 22, 2024 Healthcare Labyrinth Blog ( https://www.healthcarelabyrinth.com/great-news-for-insurers-and-medicare-beneficiaries-january-2023-to-january-2024-medicare-advantage-growth-rebounds/ ), I told you about the exciting news of Medicare Advantage’s (MA) continued strong growth (from January 2023 to January 2024) as well as a nice recovery from a bit of a sluggish increase from January 2022 to January 2023. As I always do, I publish a follow-up blog in the first few months of each year given continuing growth outside of the main enrollment season from October 15 to December 7. This is because of a somewhat recent change that allows members enrolled in a MA plans to change to a different MA plan or go back to traditional Medicare (and also choose a standalone Part D (PDP) plan. This occurs from January 1 to March 31 of each year. Because of this, MA plans continue to advertise vigorously to attract additional members and there is net new enrollment because of people hitting age 65 each month.
So what happened with March enrollment?
In my February 29 blog ( https://www.healthcarelabyrinth.com/medicare-advantage-enrollment-growth-continued-from-january-to-february/ ), I told you about growth from January to February. Here is what occurred from February to March.
- I told you an additional 182,625 enrolled in MA from January to February. From February to March, that number grew another 143,546 to 33.799 million or about 50.9% of all Medicare beneficiaries.
- While PPOs grew tremendously from January 2023 to January 2024 as well as from January to February, HMO and PPO growth were about equal from February to March: about 72K for HMOs and 68K for PPOs.
- SNPs continued their tremendous growth, increasing almost 60K from February to March. This is over 40% of the overall monthly growth alone.
- While Big MA Plans struggled year over year and in January, Big MA grew 100,990 of the total growth of 143,546 – or about 70%. This returns them close to their historic growth.
- CVS’ Aetna continued its phenomenal growth, increasing another 69K plus from February to January. Humana grew a small 14K. United was relatively flat, losing 2K lives. Centene rebounded from its planned major enrollment realignment by adding almost 17K lives. Other were relatively flat.
Summary
Year-over-year growth to January 2023 was phenomenal and we have seen two very nice follow-up months for February 1 and March 1 enrollments. Since January 2023, growth has been about 10%.
#medicareadvantage #enrollment
— Marc S. Ryan
