The vast majority (77%) of the 259 new Medicare Advantage plans for 2016 will be HMOs, according to an analysis released Oct. 14 by the Kaiser Family Foundation of the CMS “landscape files” for MA. Kaiser also found that 61% of the 203 exiting MA plans for 2016 are HMOs, while 26% are local PPOs.

Kaiser noted that the number of new plans is down from 2015’s 309, but so is the number of departing plans, which totaled 378 for 2015. The average number of MA plans available in metro counties next year is 21, according to Kaiser, while the number in non-metro counties is 11, and both of those figures are up by one from the previous year.

The study also found that the average MA premium for 2016 ranges from a low of $6 in Florida to a high of $130 in Minnesota, Gretchen Jacobson, associate director of KFF’s Program on Medicare Policy, told a briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform in Washington, D.C., Oct. 14.

Excerpted from the 10/29/15 issue of AIS’s Medicare Advantage News.

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