Optimism, Doubts Abound Regarding Tailored Medicare Advantage Plans

With more Medicare Advantage plans tailored to specific populations such as racial minorities and the LGBTQ+ community, insurers are doing a better job serving historically underserved groups, according to speakers at a recent Johns Hopkins University webinar. Sachin Jain, M.D., CEO of SCAN Health Plan, said the tailored plans “have a ton of potential,” but he cautioned that the offerings are in the “first inning” and are mixed in terms of their effectiveness and differentiation from more standard plans. 

“I think some of the execution has been really good, and some of it’s been really shallow,” Jain said. “Shallow looks like websites that are translated using outside vendors to mimic the language of the beneficiaries that they were targeting, and then excellent looks like plans that are actually contracting with specific provider networks, thinking differently about their benefits, thinking differently about the overall messaging.”