Using nutritious food MA supplemental benefits to fight chronic disease

With Medicare Advantage (MA) now the predominant source of Medicare coverage, it has enormous potential to support healthier aging and reduce the burden of chronic disease. Given the bipartisan focus on eliminating wasteful spending in MA and the importance of acting as good stewards of taxpayer dollars, it is imperative that CMS and MA plans actively collaborate to ensure the highest-value supplemental benefits are getting to members who need them the most.

CMS can accelerate this by providing MA plans increased flexibility, incentives, and accountability in leveraging nutritious food benefits—just like fitness benefits—to drive toward prevention and tackle the chronic disease epidemic. At the same time, it should increase access to supplemental benefits data, enabling more sophisticated sectorwide research to ensure taxpayer dollars flow to clinically meaningful, evidence-based supplemental benefits.