Medicare Advantage 2020 - How Fast Things Have Changed In A Year.

Last year we were looking at Medicare Advantage with 22 million enrollees and additional benefits like dental, fitness, and vision as being offered but not commonplace among all Medicare Advantage plans.

Today, we look at Medicare Advantage 2020 with another surge of 11% growth to 24.4 million enrollees, and additional benefits of fitness, vision, and dental found in almost every plan available. This change shows how attractive additional benefits have been in drawing people to Medicare Advantage. Also, with only 8% of enrollees switching plans it shows how important these benefits are in retaining members.

According to the latest data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2019 only 78% of Medicare Advantage plans offered a vision benefit, 72% offered a fitness benefit and 67% offered a dental benefit. Fast forward one year and we see all three are offered in almost every MA plan available. Fitness is now offered in 93% of the plans (+21%), dental in 88% (+21%), vision in 87% (+9%) and previously unreported hearing is offered in 83% of Medicare Advantage plans. After last year health plans took notice of what these additional benefits did in attracting new members and helping reduce downstream health problems and costs. So for 2020, health plans saw this latest wave of new enrollees and made sure they offered benefits that would be attractive and promote healthier members.

As we peer into the crystal ball for 2021, what will be the next benefit to differentiate plans? Transportation.

Since almost all plans offer vision, dental, fitness, and hearing benefits and only 33% of Medicare Advantage plans have added a transportation benefit for 2020 means transportation could be the benefit that sets your plan apart in 2021.

If you want to learn more about how to add a transportation benefit built for Medicare Advantage that helps attract members and increase your star ratings watch our webcast at https://youtu.be/kx9JPAkXNQc