Findings from HCFO-funded Study on Medicare Advantage Rates Featured in The Incidental Economist

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In a piece comparing Medicare Advantage (MA) rates to traditional Medicare (TM), Austin Frakt of The Incidental Economist featured findings a HCFO-funded study. Frakt notes that MA seems to follow TM in its prices to hospitals, indicating that MA network contracting is more focused on quality than price. In his HCFO-funded study, Robert Berenson, M.D., Urban Institute, and colleagues interviewed senior hospital and health plan executives to understand new findings suggesting that MA plans’ payments to hospitals mirror reimbursements paid under traditional fee-for-service. They explored a number of policy implications not only for the MA program but also for the problem of high and variable hospital prices in commercial insurance markets.