Medicare Advantage Plans Can Even Pay for Groceries

The program is getting a high level of attention now because the annual election period for Medicare Advantage plans for 2023 started Saturday and runs through Dec. 7.

Elevance was slow to expand into the Medicare Advantage plan market. It now has about 2 million Medicare Advantage plan enrollees, or about 7% of all of the 29 million Medicare Advantage plan enrollees.

Executives from UnitedHealth Group, a Minnetonka, Minnesota-based health insurer with a 24% share of Medicare Advantage plan enrollment, said last week that the company expects program-wide enrollment to increase about 8% in 2023, with UnitedHealth enrollment growing faster than the program average.

Centene, another large Medicare market player, will release earnings that may shed more light on the Medicare plan market on Oct. 25.

Aetna’s parent and Humana expect to release their third-quarter results Nov. 2, and Cigna will release its earnings Nov. 3.

The Numbers

Elevance is reporting $1.6 billion in net income for the third quarter on $40 billion in revenue, up from $1.5 billion in net income on $36 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2021.

Elevance ended the quarter providing or administering health coverage for 47 million people, or 4.9% more than it was covering a year earlier.

Here’s what happened to the number of people covered by specific types of Elevance health coverage products between the third quarter of 2021 and the latest quarter:

Individual commercial: 800,000 (up from 769,000)
Medicare Advantage: 2 million (up from 1.9 million)
Medicare supplement plans: 945,000 (down from 947,000)
Self-funded employer plans: 27 million (up from 26 million)
Fully insured employer plans: 4 million (up from 3.9 million)

The number of life and disability members rose to 4.8 million from, 4.7 million.

Enrollment in the company’s dental plans increased 0.3% to 6.7 million, and enrollment in dental plans that Elevance administers — rather than insures — increased 6.1% to 1.6 million.

Pictured: Gail Boudreaux. (Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg)