This month, Families USA hosted an important webinar on Medicare Advantage (MA) issues, including overpayment, marketing abuses, and delays caused by prior authorization. Medicare Rights participated as one of the panel members to bring a focus on the experiences of people with Medicare.
MA overpayment is a perennial issue that has drawn more attention in recent years. MedPAC, an independent agency that advises Congress on Medicare issues, estimates that MA payments in 2024 are 22% higher than what Medicare would have spent to cover the same group of enrollees in Original Medicare.
The overpayments allow plans to funnel money into attractive supplemental benefits that draw beneficiaries to the plans. Research shows that supplemental benefits are one of the main drivers of MA enrollment. Yet little is known about how well they are working for beneficiaries.
For the 2025 plan year, both MA and supplemental benefit offerings remain robust. KFF’s most recent analysis of plan availability shows that a slightly larger number of plans than usual have left the market. But there are still an average of 42 plans for people to choose from, compared with 43 plans in the past two years.
Importantly, some market corrections are necessary. People with Medicare and other taxpayers cannot afford to overpay MA plans in order to gain access to supplemental benefits. Instead, the most vital of these benefits, hearing, vision, and especially dental, should be added to Medicare’s standard benefits so that all people with Medicare have access to these important services.
We continue to advocate as well for greater transparency in supplemental benefits in MA, stricter limits on prior authorization, strategies to make MA plans easier to compare, and a crackdown on marketing and broker abuses that can trick people into joining plans that do not suit their needs.
Watch a recording of the webinar.
Read more about Medicare Advantage overpayment and the resulting enrollment cycle.
Read KFF’s preliminary analysis of MA availability.
