Medicare health maintenance organization benefits packages and plan performance measures

This article reports the results of an analysis of the relationship between supplemental benefits offered by Medicare+Choice (M+C) plans and their plan performance ratings. We examined two measures of plan performance: (1) plan ratings as reported in the Medicare Managed Care (MMC) Consumer Assessment of Health Care Study (CAHPS), and (2) disenrollment rates. The results of our analysis indicated that variations in plan supplemental offerings have little impact on enrollees' plan performance ratings--both overall ratings and access to care measures. Furthermore, disenrollment rates were found to be more sensitive to the availability of alternative M+C plans, either in general, or for specific benefits than to variations in benefit offerings.