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- Yep, Another Acronym: Medicare Demographics and the MCBS Data
Yep, Another Acronym: Medicare Demographics and the MCBS Data
Demographic stats -> Age, Sex, Education, Income, Residence, Marriage & Health
Jared Strock & Brett Mushett
November 09, 2023
This week’s newsletter is Sponsored By: Telos Actuarial
Telos helps develop new Insurance products for the Medicare Market!
Here is what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter!
Important links 🔗 - the best articles we found this week about the Medicare Market along with links to Jared’s recent LinkedIn posts.
Deep Dive 📚 - This week’s deep dive looks Medicare Demographic Statistics.
Compliance Chatter 📢 - Minnesota Medicare Supplement regulation changes.
Sponsor Snapshot 🚀 - brought to you by Telos Actuarial.
Data Visual of the week 📊 - Data Visual highlighting share of 2024 MA plans with Supplemental Benefits.
It’s only a 5 minute read, but it will make you 10x smarter.
Here are IMPORTANT LINKS 🔗 for the week:
Medicare wants to crack down on payments to insurance brokers - (link)
Exclusive: Cigna explores shedding Medicare Advantage business -sources - (link)
CMS targets predatory MA marketing practices, proposes prior auth and behavioral health changes - (link)
Medicare plans that help seniors afford groceries surge - (link)
Medicare Supplement Rate Filings – November 2023 - (link)
Jared’s recent LinkedIn posts:
DEEP DIVE 📚
Yep, Another Acronym: Medicare Demographics and the MCBS Data
Since the launch of the Medicare Market Insights newsletter, deep dives have taken a closer look at the history of Medicare, enrollment statistics, and wading through the alphabet soup (part A, part B).
This week’s deep dive will introduce the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) and present some high-level demographic statistics underlying the population of Medicare beneficiaries.
What Is It?
The MCBS is a continuous survey of a representative sample of the Medicare population.
The survey is managed by the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA) of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which has a contract through the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC).
The MCBS derives crucial information about social determinants of health and health outcomes that are not available within the administrative program data.
The MCBS has been compiling continuous data on Medicare beneficiaries since 1991, which has included more than 1.2 million interviews provided by thousands of respondents.
Goals
The key goals of the MCBS are:
Determine expenditures and sources of payment for all services used by Medicare beneficiaries (e.g., co-payments, deductibles, and non-covered services)
Identify all types of health insurance coverage and relate coverage to sources of payment
Trace outcomes over time (e.g., changes in health status)
Determine impacts of Medicare program changes on satisfaction with care and usual source of care
Data
Three times annually, the MCBS releases data in addition to an annual Chart Book of key estimates from the survey.
A public use file (PUF) and associated documentation is available for download through the MCBS website. The PUF contains selected data items that allow the user to analyze the following for Medicare beneficiaries: access to and satisfaction with healthcare, and medical conditions.
In addition to the PUF, there are two other annual data releases related to the MCBS. However, these detailed data releases can only be accessed directly from CMS after submitting a data use agreement.
The files created by the MCBS are typically available 12-15 months after the end of the data collection period.
Demographics
The most currently available data from the MCBS was the fall release from survey year 2021, which is used in the following statistics.
Age and Sex
While Medicare is known as providing coverage for the senior population, there is a sizable cohort of individuals under the age of 65 and eligible for Medicare due to disability. Additionally, most Medicare beneficiaries are female.
Education
Nearly 88% of Medicare beneficiaries have completed high school, while more than 57% have achieved education beyond high school.
Income and Residence
71% of Medicare beneficiaries indicated an annual income of more than $25,000 and a residence within a metro area.
Marriage
Over 53% of Medicare beneficiaries indicated they are currently married with over 90% having been married at some point during their lifetime.
Self-Reported Health
18% of Medicare beneficiaries consider themselves to have excellent health while on the opposite end, nearly 5% consider themselves to be in poor health.
Other Data Elements
In addition to the demographics presented above, the MCBS obtains information from Medicare beneficiaries regarding their healthcare utilization, access to care, and satisfaction of services (93% of beneficiaries reported being at least satisfied with the quality of care).
Some examples include the number of inpatient stays during the current year, trouble getting needed health care, and satisfaction with doctors’ concern with overall health.
Did these demographics align with your expectations of the underlying Medicare beneficiary population?
What other demographics would you be interested in learning about Medicare beneficiaries?
Sources:
COMPLIANCE CHATTER 📢:
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota approved SF 2744, which amends Minnesota’s Medicare Supplement regulations that applies to policies offered, issued, or renewed on or after August 1, 2025.
SF 2744 amends Minnesota Statutes 2022, sections 62A.3099 through 62A.44, by:
Prohibiting pre-existing condition limitations
Repeals the requirement that policy must provide pre-existing condition coverage during the first six months of coverage if the insured was not diagnosed or treated for the condition for 90 days immediately preceding the effective date of coverage.
Repeals the requirement that replacement coverage should waive any time periods applicable to pre-existing conditions, or waiting, elimination, or probationary periods to the extent the time was spent under the original policy.
Adding a Guarantee Issue situation for individuals:
enrolled in a state public program and is losing coverage due to the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment conditions, as provided by Code of Federal Regulations, title 45, section 155.420(d)(9) and (d)(1), and Public Law 117-328, section 5131 (2022).
Adding an open enrollment period, as defined in Code of Federal Regulations, title 42, section 422.62, paragraph (a), clauses (2) to (4), for any eligible Medicare beneficiary in Minnesota, where medical underwriting cannot be used when issuing a Medicare Supplement plan.
If you would like to learn more about our compliance services, reach out to [email protected].
Sponsor Snapshot 🚀: Telos Actuarial
Telos helps insurance carriers launch new products for the 65+ market.
Market Research → Pricing → Benchmarking → DOI Approval → LAUNCH 🚀
We help at every step.
Send us a note if you want to launch your own product: (link)
DATA VISUAL of the Week 📊
This week’s data visual comes from KFF (link). It shows share of 2024 MA plans with supplemental benefits.
If you’re ready, here are some ways we can help you:
Newsletter Sponsorship opportunities: promote your product or services to leaders in the Medicare space. Let’s discuss. (link)
Market Research: Reports that help you wrap your arms around the Senior focused insurance markets. (link)
Consulting: We can help you develop new insurance products for the Medicare market, appraise your books of business, and keep you compliant. Let’s discuss. (link)