In mid-March, the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission (MedPAC), which advises Congress on Medicare policy, made a bombshell disclosure in its annual Medicare . The rebates that Medicare offers Medicare Advantage plans for supplemental benefits like vision, dental, and gym membership were at “nearly record levels,” more than doubling from 2018 to nearly $64 billion in 2024, but the government “does not have reliable information about enrollees’ actual use of these benefits at this time.” In other words: $64 billion is being spent to subsidize private Medicare Advantage plans to provide benefits that are not available to enrollees in traditional Medicare, .
Not only is this an enormous potential misallocation of taxpayer resources from the Medicare trust fund, it is also a critical part of . The additional benefits offered in Medicare Advantage plans are what entice people to give up traditional Medicare, where there is no prior authorization, closed networks, or care denials. But, as MedPAC states in the report, even though the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not collect the data on utilization of supplemental benefits, what little data there is does not paint a pretty picture, with MedPAC noting that, “Limited data suggest that use of non-Medicare-covered supplemental benefits is low.
” is among the first media outlets to report MedPAC’s findings. A 2018 study by Milliman, an actuarial firm, found that just 11 percent of Medicare Advanta.
