Are Medicare Advantage Plans Overpaid and Corrupt?

By John R. Graham,

Medicare Advantage consists of private plans in which Medicare beneficiaries can choose to enroll. They were made more popular by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which also introduced Medicare’s drug benefit (Part D). If not for Medicare Advantage, beneficiaries would be stuck in the traditional Medicare Part A (physician) and Part B (hospital) plans, where the federal government determines how much to pay providers according to bureaucratic formulae. It’s sort of like Gosplan, the old Soviet economic pricing and planning mechanism.

To escape this fate, one third of Medicare beneficiaries now choose Medicare Advantage plans. Obamacare (“the ACA”) was supposed to squeeze those seniors out of their plans in order to finance Obamacare. However, when the time came, the Administration balked. Meghan McCarthy of Morning Consult explains this “Potomac Two-Step“:

The approach, two years in a row, has been that CMS issues a proposed rate in February with very tough reductions, a proposition that rallies insurers and members on both sides of the aisle to vehemently oppose the cuts. After much hand-wringing and commenting, the administration arrives at a much friendlier number in the final release.

Medicare Advantage plans are popular for a number of reasons. Most importantly, they provide better care than traditional Medicare. Joseph Newhouse and Thomas McGuire review this in an academic journal. It is ably summarized by Austin Frakt in the New York Times UpShot blog:

Medicare Advantage plans — private plans that serve as alternatives to the traditional, public program for those that qualify for it — underperform traditional Medicare in one respect: They cost 6 percent more.

But they outperform traditional Medicare in another way: They offer higher quality.

The quality argument is hard to combat, but some try nevertheless.

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