Despite Medicare Advantage insurers' enthusiasm for increased
flexibility in allowable supplemental benefits and a slew of recent plan press
releases touting goodies such as pest control and "Papa Pals" for the
2020 plan year, uptake of more "resource intensive" benefits geared
toward seriously ill seniors remains relatively modest, according to a new
report from the Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy.
The December report, "Improving Serious Illness Care in
Medicare Advantage: New Regulatory Flexibility for Supplemental Benefits,"
showed that a total of 507 standard MA plans in 2019 offered one of five types
of benefits addressing serious illness, accounting for roughly 11% of the
approximately 4,500 standard MA plans in 2019. By contrast, 377 in 2020 offered
at least one of the five benefits highlighted in the report, while no plans in
2019 offered more than one of these benefits. But that drop was mainly driven
by one major carrier abandoning its caregiver support benefit for 2020.
Meanwhile, about 175 plans offered at least two of these types of these
benefits, according to Robert Saunders, research director and one of the
report's authors.
Despite the decrease in caregiver support, which had the
greatest initial uptake of the five benefit categories in 2019, researchers saw
meaningful increases for 2020 in benefits such as adult day care and palliative
care that "more directly address the needs of members with serious
illness."
The study also linked the PBP data to MA enrollment figures by
plan and by county to assess the geographic impacts of the policy changes. For
2020, many parts of the country do not have any plans offering new supplemental
benefits, and those aimed at serious care were likely to be offered in urban
counties, said the report.
Barring any major disruption, 2021 will likely be the year of
growth for new flexible benefits, as it takes plans a couple years to price,
test and stand up ones that will have a lasting impact, adds Saunders.
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