Health care was a pivotal issue during the recent midterm
elections. For Medicare Advantage plans that are in the middle of the 2019
Annual Election Period (AEP), they'll be happy to cut the noise and get back to
business, industry experts tell AIS Health.
"The election was a pretty big distraction for market share growth for the AEP," says Jeff Fox, president of Gorman Health Group, who heard from health plan clients that enrollment slowed down. With mixed messages in the media about the Affordable Care Act, pre-existing conditions and "Medicare for All," "seniors were confused about what’s real and tend to assume a lot of these things pertain to them, so agents were out there trying to explain what's going on and it was tough from a sales perspective."
Fox adds, "We knew the elections were going to impact the early sales in MA, but now that the noise is off the TV, off the radio, out of the mailboxes, plans can get back to focusing on their market share opportunities for 2019. And seeing how crazy this election was made them realize how crazy it's going to be in two years, so I think plans will really dial in on market share opportunities in 2019 and 2020, because who knows what’s going to happen in two years?"
"I see companies putting in a much bigger stake and effort around Medicare, and I think MA will just continue on an upward trajectory. It's a stable market on an uptick," weighs in Lindsay Resnick, executive vice president at Wunderman Health, which provides data analytics and technology-enabled marketing to national and regional MA plans.
And as discussions around Medicare for All — and what it means — continue, Resnick says he sees that bringing even more attention to MA as a model of public-private partnership. "Although I don't expect any action around Medicare for All, it'll be a policy debate in the 2020 elections. The problem right now is Medicare for All isn’t really defined consistently," he adds.
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