Relentless Health Value

Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment has nearly doubled over the past decade. It grew 37% from 2016 to 2020. Right now, MA comprises nearly 40% of the Medicare population—and that number is only expected to grow. So, in case you’ve been out of the loop, at the beginning of 2020, CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) rolled out a third category of these “chronic supplemental benefits.” And these chronic supplemental benefits allow plans to offer basically services to attenuate social determinants of health to offer stuff like nonemergency transportation, meals, home modifications … that whole list. This is all, really, part of a broader bipartisan effort to move Medicare from an acute care to a chronic care program. Then … corona. So, the question I’m kind of wondering about at this juncture is, Were/Are MA beneficiaries able to maintain their health status better than, say, other plan designs, especially given some of these chronic supplemental benefits, which you’d think would be super helpful in