Brief Estimating Current-Law Health Care Spending of Medicare Advantage Enrollees for Use in Microsimulation Modeling of Medicare Policies
Adele Shartzer, Bowen Garrett, Diane Arnos, Jessica Banthin, Anuj Gangopadhyaya
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Medicare Advantage (MA) accounted for 34 percent of Medicare program spending in 2019. Microsimulation modeling of Medicare policy reforms requires estimates of spending for all Medicare enrollees, but quality spending data for MA enrollees are not generally available. In this methods brief, we describe the approach we use in the MCARE-SIM model to estimate MA program spending and out-of-pocket spending by MA enrollees at the county level using plan-level and county-level data sources from CMS. These estimates can then be used as inputs to subsequent analyses of changes in Medicare policy.

Research Areas Aging and retirement
Tags Medicare and private health insurance Health insurance Retirement policy
Policy Centers Health Policy Center