George Dippel, president, Deft Research, will present key findings from the market research firm’s latest report on Medicare consumer shopping and switching at the Medicare Marketing & Sales Summit, which will take place February 24-26 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In this exclusive interview with RISE, Dippel offers his initial impressions of the study’s findings and why it’s crucial that marketing and sales professionals restart their member education efforts now.
It's been a difficult two years for the Medicare Advantage (MA) industry. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rate increases didn’t match medical inflation, and carriers were asked to do more with less. The result? Cuts to member benefits and cost increases.
But last year was even worse, according to George Dippel, president of Deft Research. Indeed, MA experienced the most negative disruption he has ever seen in the 15 years he’s conducted research in the industry. Nine carriers exited the market and 1.8 million MA individual, non-Special Needs Plan consumers had their plans terminated last year.
“I look at this as two years of a long, dark, cold winter in MA,” he said. “It’s been tough times. There have been lots of carrier layoffs, various vendors have gone under, carriers have gone under, and it culminated this past year with 8.7 percent of the individual non-SNP MA market getting a termination notice.”
Those factors, Dippel explained, combined with carriers dealing with the after-effects of medical loss ratio pressure and post-COVID health care utilization, created a perfect storm of massive disruption. And it led to many carriers this past fall cutting back on marketing. Some carriers eliminated marketing completely, he noted. While some changes due to the Inflation Reduction Act benefited seniors, such as the $2,000 max out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions for the year, in many cases seniors also saw huge increases in their deductibles. In a series of studies that Deft has conducted in the past year, there has been a 10-point decrease in consumer’s perception of MA overall on a scale from 0 to 100.
“All of this negativity in MA and Medicare overall has weighed in on seniors. It has hurt their impression of their health insurance overall as being the best health plan,” Dippel said.
Indeed, MA members left their plans at a high rate last year. Dippel said the industry experienced the highest switch rate on record at 23 percent. Basically, one out of four seniors switched plans in 2024 and 16 percent of those consumers chose to switch, they weren’t terminated from plans, he said.
The future shows promise
Fortunately, there are positive signs ahead.
Dippel, who will present findings from Deft’s annual Medicare Shopping and Switching Study at RISE’s Medicare Marketing & Sales Summit, said that the announcement of the Advance Notice’s proposed increased payments of 4.33 percent on average to MA plans in 2026 is encouraging. “We're back to reimbursement at ordinary levels that MA carriers need in order to be profitable and have normal operations and not have to lay off a bunch of people,” he said.
Although it’s unclear whether the payment increases will be finalized under the new administration, Dippel said he still feels positive that the industry is coming out of this dark period. “Things will be better,” he said, “But we have our work cut out for us. We have to rebuild that relationship with seniors. We have to market to them the benefits that matter the most.”
Dippel described it as a need to “hit the reset button” and return to marketing and member communication. “We must restore that bond that we’ve had with our customers, because seniors are growing more negative on MA, but we have to do it now.”
The first step, he said, is for MA sales and marketing to help members understand the changes that were put in place for 2025.
“We need to make sure we’ve done everything that we can in this first quarter to help them understand those changes, so we have a chance to build this back or we are set to lose more of these folks during the open enrollment period,” he said, adding, “If you can hold on to your members that you have knowing that for 2026, you might have richer benefits and a stronger design, then you are going to reap the rewards of that if and when rates improve in 2026 and beyond.”
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The key is to build back trust of seniors and re-engage with them. “It’s going to be a challenge for carriers because they’re still operating off 2025 rates that weren’t good for this year…But you can’t wait until rates finally improve. This is the year we have to reconnect with members. You have to do it in anticipation that the rates will be there when you have the members for next year.”
Learn more about Deft’s findings from the latest Medicare Shopping and Switching Study during Dippel’s session at the Medicare Marketing & Sales Summit. Dippel will speak at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, February 25, the first day of the main conference.
The Medicare Marketing & Sales Summit will take place February 24-26 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Click here to see the entire agenda, roster of speakers, and how to register.