The prices that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans pay for hospital services have historically hewed closely to what traditional Medicare (TM) pays for the same services, but the studies that first established this fact relied on claims data from an era when MA was far smaller. This paper uses 2025 hospital price transparency (HPT) data to study whether and how the relationship between MA and TM prices may have changed. We find that the prices that MA plans pay for both inpatient and outpatient services are still close to TM’s, on average, consistent with the findings of two other recent studies using HPT data. We also find little evidence that MA-to-TM price ratios vary with MA penetration. We discuss whether these patterns are likely to persist, tentatively concluding that while there are plausible reasons that MA prices might ultimately diverge from TM’s, this outcome seems unlikely in the near term and absent major changes in policy.
Related Content
Authors
-
Acknowledgements and disclosures
We thank Loren Adler for helpful comments on a draft of this analysis, Cameron Crider for assistance with fact-checking, and Rasa Siniakovas for editorial and web-posting assistance. We are grateful to Arnold Ventures for a grant that supported this project. All errors are our own.
The Brookings Institution is committed to quality, independence, and impact.
We are supported by a diverse array of funders. In line with our values and policies, each Brookings publication represents the sole views of its author(s).
