For 2024, Select MAOs Target More Social Needs, Enhance D-SNP Offerings

With the Oct. 1 start of marketing for the 2024 Annual Election Period (AEP), several major publicly traded insurers have unveiled somewhat slower plans for geographic expansion next year, while CMS’s 2024 MA and Part D landscape files suggest that premium increases were a common way to offset potential rate cuts. But according to recent press releases unveiling product enhancements for next year, insurers appear to be extending enhanced supplemental benefits to the broader MA population while offering Dual Eligible Special Needs Plan (D-SNP) beneficiaries greater flexibility to address nonmedical needs.

Unveiling its largest service area expansion that includes continued D-SNP growth, CVS Health Corp.’s Aetna on Oct. 1 said all D-SNP products will feature $0 Part D drugs; dental, vision and hearing benefits; and an Extra Benefits Card with an Extra Supports Wallet. The latter features an “enhanced allowance for members to spend on things they need the most, like healthy foods, utilities, rent/mortgage” and other items, per a company press release. In certain D-SNPs, members can earn an additional $30 per month in their Extra Supports Wallet by selecting a “high value” primary care provider, added the insurer. These “meaningful D-SNP product enhancements…will enable Aetna to remain an industry leader in this space,” asserts Terri Swanson, president of Medicare for Aetna.