Medicare Advantage continues to see unprecedented enrollment growth, but not for everyone.
As of February, a record 33 million people are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. For-profit payers account for nearly three-quarters of that enrollment, while health system-owned MA plans continue to lose market share, according to a March 5 analysis from Chartis.
Though health system-owned MA enrollment has grown overall recently, it has underperformed with respect to the largest payers and currently makes up 13% of the MA market, compared to 17% in 2019.
"The continued erosion of provider-sponsored health plan membership in Medicare Advantage means that these plans are missing out on the nation's largest growth segment and are likely not capturing the full value of plan-provider integration for growth," Chartis' analysts wrote.
The eroding MA market share for providers comes as several health systems recently have exited the insurance space. In February, Springfield, Mass.-based Baystate Health reached a deal to sell Health New England to Point32Health, the parent company of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. In January, Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica said it planned to sell its insurance subsidiary, Paramount Health, to Medical Mutual of Ohio.
In November, Ascension Wisconsin finalized a deal to sell all of its stake in Network Health to Froedtert Health. The Milwaukee-based system is now the sole owner of Network Health, which offers health plans in 23 Wisconsin counties.
At least one system-owned plan has shut down in the past year. In October, Fredericksburg, Va.-based Mary Washington Healthcare said it would not offer its Medicare Advantage plan in 2024.
Though some systems are moving away from Medicare Advantage, others are moving full steam ahead.
Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health, which recently added Michigan to its list of states where it operates the system's MediGold MA program, also operates it in Connecticut, Ohio, Idaho, New York and Iowa.
"Everyone is competing in this space pretty aggressively as we are in each of our regions as well," Trinity COO Ben Carter told investors in October. "We are continuing to evolve MediGold by investing in and growing it."