There’s plenty to be annoyed about these days. Whether it be vaccine mandates (pick a side), the demise of Build Back Better and its failure to deliver $150 billion in funding for home- and community-based services, or inadequate state Medicaid reimbursements, it’s understandable if you’re irritable. So instead let’s focus on something positive, something that offers a glimpse of possible better ahead. To me, that is the creativity of Medicare Advantage plans and their positive impact on home care beneficiaries.

When it comes to helping seniors at home, these plans — which serve 46% of the Medicare population and are projected to reach 29.5 million beneficiaries this year — seem to have it right. Their strategy of keeping seniors at home and healthy through so-called special supplemental benefits for the chronically ill (SSBCI) is on target. Those benefits, which include everything from food and produce to indoor air quality equipment and services to structural home modifications, actually seem to have been designed with seniors and their health in mind. After all, we all know by now that health is much more than a checkup. It is living in a place that is safe, that promotes stability and contentment, and gives us what we need to live our fullest lives possible.  

I’m not alone in this thinking. More than 30 organizations spanning healthcare and consumer groups, companies and nonprofits, have written letters to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, asking her to provide a stable rate and policy environment in 2023 for these plans. The letters talk about different aspects of MA plans — one addresses supplemental benefits, another targets in-home health risk assessments, while a third focuses on health equity. Each letter asserts MA plans have improved the lives of the Medicare population.

MA plans’ popularity is encouraging. Ultimately, the plans may be resonating because people instinctively recognize that they “get” it. We intuitively know that health cannot be siloed between holistic care and medical care — between mind and body. MA plans, with their wide array of supplemental benefits that have nothing to do with medical care and everything to do with well-being, are addressing the complicated nature of health.

Liza Berger is editor of McKnight’s Home Care. Email her at [email protected]. Follow her @LizaBerger19.