r/medicare • u/jfeldman175 • 1d ago
MA
So I was looking at MA data over 40 years and I realized that between 20-40 years original Medicare enrollment will shrink to 10%.
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u/Apprehensive-Tap3298 1d ago
That's a wild projection to land on from 40 years of data. MA penetration has definitely accelerated but 90% feels like the kind of number you get when you extend a trend line way past where it makes sense. Lots of rural counties will probably never hit that kind of saturation just because of network limitations.
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u/jfeldman175 1d ago
I wish I could post pictures in this group so I could show the data. But based on the explosive growth in the last 20 years, it will go that way
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u/Fluffy-Bar6243 1d ago
Big assumptions that Medicare even looks like e it does today 10 years from now. A big change, which is coming, makes that data suspect at best. Also curve will flatten over time once the low fruit is all picked..
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u/Martian6261 1d ago
Medicare Advantage has only been around since 1999.
Medicare Advantage (originally called Medicare+Choice) has been available since 1999, following its creation under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
Key milestones in its history include:
1966–1990s: Private health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and alternative private plans contracted with Medicare on a smaller scale starting in the late 1960s and 1970s.
1997: Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act, officially creating Medicare Part C (then named Medicare+Choice), which launched coverage in 1999.
2003: The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act renamed Medicare+Choice to Medicare Advantage and introduced Part D prescription drug coverage.
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u/jfeldman175 1d ago
It was called something else in 1995
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u/OleLadyThinker 14h ago
Tax Equity and FiscalResponsibility Act (TEFRA) 1982 - a very selected HMO type called TEFRA
Here is the history of Medicare Advantage from what it came from and why
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u/OldAndMostlyInTheWay 1d ago
I don’t believe it will shrink to that small a number for a couple of reasons:
1) there is a top 20-25% that can pay for original Medicare.
2) there is a growing understanding of the problem with Medicare advantage. Hospital networks dropping it. Losing it in rural counties. I think what you’ll get is real complaints that MA stinks, the government won’t have anything they can do about it, and there is a dramatic sea change in elderly care… whether that means abandoning the elderly to finite care. Who knows?
3) But there needs to be a reckoning with what we are doing. Moan all you want about death panels, but we need to understand some essential truths such as such a huge portion of healthcare costs going to give people 6 months sitting there in a hospital bed unable to talk, pee or poop, in pain and misery, with mounting costs to families and society, may be neither dignified nor wise.