Comparing Spending Across Medicare Programs

AJMC August 22, 2022
Brian J. Miller, MD, MBA, MPH, Stephen T. Parente, PhD, MPH, MS, Gail R. Wilensky, PhD

As Medicare Advantage increasingly becomes the dominant form of Medicare coverage, Congress must improve transparency of programmatic costs and benefits to promote beneficiary choice.

ABSTRACT

As Medicare Advantage increasingly becomes the dominant form of Medicare, meaningful and accurate comparisons with traditional fee-for-service Medicare will be increasingly important for both beneficiaries and policy makers. Recent debate among policy experts, government advisory bodies, and health plans highlights the need to create standardized comparison between the 2 Medicare programs. Supplemental benefits, Part B cost-sharing differences, and prescription drug benefits should be valued with a series of structured comparisons. Making this information transparent to beneficiaries through the plan finder would improve beneficiary decision-making. Finally, pragmatic comparisons would support policy makers in making improvements...

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