Dive Brief:
- In anticipation of Humana’s final purchase by Aetna, Humana CEO Bruce Broussard is touting the benefits of Medicare Advantage.
- If the merger is completed, Medicare and Medicaid will comprise about 56% of the combined company’s roughly $115 billion in operating revenue, Louisville Business First notes.
- Meanwhile, the number of beneficiaries signing up for Medicare Advantage hit 16.9 million this year, triple the 5.6 million enrolled in 2005.
Dive Insight:
In an op-ed in Forbes, Broussard and Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove write that Medicare Advantage puts health plans and providers — historically, rivals — on a single mission to improve people’s health and well-being.
New partnerships with hospitals and physicians will usher in a “new era” of healthcare delivery, the authors say. “We’re doing this by using a sophisticated, data-driven, integrated care delivery model to make a positive difference in the health of Medicare Advantage members, while maintaining the goal of keeping costs low — for the members themselves and for the healthcare system as a whole.”
A substitute for traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage rewards health plans for providing value-based services.
The focus is on enrollees’ overall health, rather than traditional “sick care,” note Broussard and Cosgrove. Using data analytics, health plans and providers can monitor and gauge how a patient is doing and where there may be gaps in care.
Currently, Humana claims close to 3.3 million Medicare Advantage members, out of a total of 7.8 million Medicare enrollees.