Medicare Managed Care Plans’ Higher Costs to Jump in 2024

Private Medicare Advantage plans are projected to receive $88 billion—or 23%—more to care for beneficiaries in 2024 than it would cost in traditional fee-for-service Medicare, a congressional advisory panel reported Friday.

Since 2007, “we estimate that Medicare Advantage plans will have been paid $613 billion above fee-for-service spending,” said Luis Serna, a principal policy analyst at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. About half of these payments for spending above fee-for-service levels have occurred since 2020, Serna said.

Serna, during the commission’s January meeting, said the higher payments to the managed care plans are due mainly to two factors: aggressive “coding” ...