hras

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: 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

Provider groups, anti-Medicare Advantage (MA) advocates and researchers, and even the congressional policy arm MedPAC are busy attacking MA for supposedly being over-reimbursed. Depending on the study you find, these folks will tell you that MA is over-reimbursed by as much as $88 billion annually. Of course, many of these calculations are speculative and throw in policy decisions by Congress to make Stars funding additive as well as to pay some areas of the country more than the fee-for-service (FFS) rate to promote more benefit choice in rural areas. They argue that risk adjustment coding is out of control and that MA has beneficial selection compared with the traditional program. I have told you often in these pages that I come somewhere up the middle here. I discount the critics’ views and analyses. It is strange that critics’ overpayment estimates jumped from under $20 billion for so many years to