Episode Details

Here's a big thing that Betsy Seals makes clear in this show: Big companies can be successful in Medicare Advantage (MA)—and I mean success in all of its financial glory—because they have experience and the scale and also the specialized departments who keep track of all kinds of intricacies that are rate critical to MA success. Specifically, things Betsy Seals talks about as critical success factors, for example, are having relationships with brokers and health systems and other provider organizations. She also makes it clear how much local market knowledge is necessary. A benefit design working great in one local market might be a medical trend disaster in another area with different levels of social determinants of health (SDoH) or different disease patterns, so scaling into new areas isn't a matter of just cutting and pasting. History has shown it's easy enough to go down in a flaming ball of unanticipated medical trend and/or OIG/DOJ scrutiny.

So, this is one thing that big MA carriers can get right and potentially, for sure, benefit patients in their plans. Now I say this knowing full well that there's a brouhaha afoot in which there are some who are really pro-MA and there are some who are really not. In this show with Betsy Seals today, we do not get into this (ie, Do patients in MA plans fare better than patients in traditional Medicare?). But I have a point to make, and I'm just gonna make it here.

Like most "Is this better than that?" questions in healthcare, there is not one answer; and anyone running around espousing pretty much anything as a broad-stroke holy grail is pretty much full of it—and I would say that as a general statement. Whether MA is better than traditional Medicare depends on who the patient is and also which MA plan we're talking about here.

So, starting on the "not a fan" side of the house, Wendell Potter has said (with evidence) that if a patient is toward the end of his or her life or acutely ill or needs to go to an NCI-designated cancer center, it could easily be deduced that traditional Medicare is going to be better.

On the other hand, there seems to be evidence, including a recent JAMA article by Ravi Parikh, MD, MPP, and Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, that concludes MA produces a 22% to 26% reduction in costs compared to MSSP (Medicare Shared Savings Program) arrangements. And this is across just a general patient population of all age ranges, if I'm reading the study right. The great results that are discussed in that JAMA article are what can happen when payers and providers align to tackle SDoH and preventative stuff and are willing to go out into the community to curb potentially avoidable downstream acute events.

David Carmouche, MD, by the way, on episode 343 talked at length about this. But there are variables here, and let me mention one of them: how good the Medicare Advantage plan is at risk-based contracting with physician groups. How good are they at putting patients into accountable relationships with provider organizations who are getting paid to keep patients healthy, meaning the MA plan is offering budget-based prospective payment contracts to physician groups? This is the case in that Ochsner/JAMA article example that Dr. David Carmouche was talking about. Ochsner, the health system in Louisiana, and MA plans were working together; and both assumed risk for this population.

Susan Dentzer, president and CEO over at America's Physician Groups (APG), does a great jo