Vincent Giglierano Discusses Medicare Advantage Benefits With InsuranceNewsNet

Vincent Giglierano, senior manager of health services research for Faegre Drinker Consulting, spoke to InsuranceNewsNet about competition among supplemental benefit programs and memory fitness, the fastest-growing Medicare Advantage fitness benefit.

In “Medicare open enrollment closes, setting new record of 65M enrollees,” Giglierano noted that “the benefit competition gives us is twofold.” He said, “The first benefit is that patients are now getting more ‘fun’ things, like home-delivered meals, air-quality cleaning products and things like that are really expanding the role of what a health insurance company can do to address their beneficiaries while also expanding the definition of healthcare.”

Giglierano added that more health plans are paying for the supplemental benefits through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services benchmarks and approval policies.

In “‘Brain training’ is fastest growing Medicare Advantage fitness benefit, data shows,” Giglierano explained, “Memory fitness is kind of the best of both worlds where it directly addresses older Americans’ greatest fear, which is cognitive decline, while also being a benefit that is heavily marketable. It really does allow plans with the benefit to differentiate against their competitors.”

Additionally, Giglierano said, “I’m assuming that a lot of people who were stuck at home during [the] COVID-19 [pandemic] found that it’s something to do. And going through memory training programs are essentially little games that you can play on your computer.” He concluded, “They have studies everywhere on how brain fitness impacts congestive heart failure, diabetes, stroke and all of these other issues that are outside cognitive decline.”