MedPAC Again Lambasts Medicare Advantage Overpayments; AHIP Fires Back

  • Apr 03, 2025

    The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s (MedPAC) scrutiny of Medicare Advantage’s financial status continued in its March 2025 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy. The commission estimated that in 2025, the government will pay $84 billion more than it would pay if MA members were instead enrolled in fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare. These so-called overpayments are driven by MA plans’ enrollment of a healthier risk pool — or favorable selection — MedPAC observed, echoing its previous status reports on MA. The industry’s largest trade group, however, maintained that MedPAC’s MA cost analyses are based on incomplete data and faulty assumptions.

    “Many comparisons of MA to FFS spending are conducted on an invalid ‘apples-to-oranges’ basis,” a spokesperson for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT. “Research has shown that ‘apples-to-apples’ FFS costs more than government estimates, which suggests MA delivers savings to the Medicare program,” the spokesperson adds, citing four recent studies on the topic. 

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    © 2024 MMIT
  • Carina Belles

    Carina has been covering public-sector health care since 2018. As a data reporter for Radar on Medicare Advantage, she creates infographics and data stories on issues impacting Medicare, Medicaid and Part D. She also develops AIS Health Daily, a free daily newsletter that showcases AIS’s strong reporting across our four publications and parent company Norstella’s suite of market access and data solutions. Prior to joining the editorial team, she managed Medicare and Medicaid data for the Directory of Health Plans, AIS’s industry-standard health coverage database. She graduated from Ohio University with a B.S. in Journalism.

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