KEY
POINTS
·
With 10,000 baby
boomers aging into the program every day, Medicare is now the fastest-growing
segment of the health insurance market.
·
Enrollment in private
Medicare Advantage plans has grown by about 8% a year on average.
·
For 2020, the Trump
administration is projecting the market will see 10% growth.
With Medicare open enrollment getting underway
this week, insurers are putting on the hard press to attract new baby boomers
aging into the program, offering hundreds of plans and service options tailored
to their individual medical needs.
Guy Penney, a Sacramento, California, hairstylist who turns
65 next month, says he’s been deluged with mailings from insurers for months
now.
“People come out of the woodwork to contact you,” said
Penney. He said he’s never thought much about health insurance because he’s
been covered under his wife’s benefits for years.
Now, he’s finding the wide number of plan options overwhelming.
He’s leaning toward enrolling in traditional Medicare coverage with a
supplemental Medigap plan, rather than an all-in-one Medicare Advantage
coverage. But, he’s not sure.
“It’s a little scary, because you’re wondering whether
you’re going to get the best deal, you know? Because there are so many
different ones,” he said.
Medicare annual enrollment started
Tuesday and runs through Dec. 7.
With 10,000 baby boomers aging into the program every day,
Medicare is now the fastest-growing segment of the health insurance market.
Enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans has grown by about 8% a year on
average, and for 2020, the Trump administration is projecting the market will
see 10% growth.
The major health insurers are all expanding coverage for
next year to try to capture more market share. CVS
Health’s Aetna unit is moving into more than 260 new counties.
Rival UnitedHealthcare is expanding into 100
new markets, Cigna is adding 80 new counties, while Humana is adding more than
two dozen.
For Medicare beneficiaries, the expansion amounts to a 32%
increase in the number of Medicare Advantage plan choices compared to last year
— in some markets that means 20 options or more. According to the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare Advantage premium costs will be down
14% on average from last year.
Online health insurance brokerage eHealth is gearing up to
help seniors sort through all the new options. Their agents typically spend
more than 40 minutes to an hour on the phone with enrollees.
“It’s great for seniors — there are a lot more plans [and] a
lot more alternatives,” said eHealth CEO Scott Flanders. “But there’s also more
confusion and a little bit more stress for the senior, trying to get them into
the right plan.”
The recent surge in new choices can be partly attributed to
a change by the Trump administration that gives insurers greater flexibility to
design all-in-one private Medicare Advantage plans that include additional
benefits that go beyond add-ons like dental and vision plans. New service
options can target beneficiaries with more complex needs like help with home
care, chronic disease management and transportation to doctor visits.
“We have 10 new products this year that are designed for
people with specific chronic conditions,” said Joy Scheil, senior director for
Medicare Advantage plans at UnitedHealthcare, but she admits the rollout of
some of enhanced services is a work in progress.
“We’re still building out the infrastructure for some of
these … figuring out what’s the right criteria to ensure we’re getting these to
the right members,” she said.
Even with older, sicker enrollees, all-in-one Medicare
Advantage plans can still be lucrative for insurers if they can keep them at
home and avoid costly hospital stays. That is the proposition of new Medicare
entrants in the market like Devoted Health, which is backed by venture capital
firm Andreessen Horowitz, and rivals Oscar Health and Clover Health, which are
backed by Alphabet’s Google Ventures.
“There seems to be a lot of potential value for the venture
capital companies because when you think about it, they’re investing in these
insurance plans for seniors rather than investing in other types of products
like biotech or any health-care technology,” said Gretchen
Jacobson, associate director of Medicare policy at the Kaiser Family
Foundation.
The growth in private Medicare plans comes as Democratic
presidential hopeful Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren have proposed banning all private health insurers and
enrolling all Americans in traditional Medicare plans administered by the
government.
Even among Democrats, there is skepticism about how their
“Medicare for All” proposals would transition away from private insurers. An
NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month found that 56% of voters oppose
getting rid of private insurance.
“Private plans play a very large role in the current
Medicare system,” said Jacobson, adding “it could be really tough to unravel
that, particularly in some markets where you see a vast majority of people
enrolled in private plans.”
Baby boomers like Penney value having plan options, even
though it’s challenging to make the right choice.
“What helps is the fact that I know next year I could change
it, if I didn’t like it,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment