The implications of plan design options for Medicare beneficiaries

To make an informed selection between traditional Medicare and a Medicare managed care plan, a consumer needs to understand the implications of choosing one over the other. What are the implications of plan design for care, cost, and patient autonomy? Consumers need information about these questions. However, a barrier to developing this consumer information is the lack of a consistent body of evidence. An intermediate step is to tap expert knowledge. The purpose of this study is to use expert consensus (across a spectrum of health care experts) to identify the implications of plan design. Experts were surveyed and the degree to which there is consensus provides an initial picture of what experts judge to be important to the consumer. The findings show that experts agree on several implications associated with choosing managed care over the traditional Medicare plan. They also agree that many of these attributes vary considerably across health plans.