Medicare+Choice: current role and near-term prospects.

With the enactment of the Balanced Budget Act in 1997, the Medicare+Choice (M+C) program has been beset by plan withdrawals and declining enrollment. Despite this, M+C provides coverage to more than 12 percent of the Medicare population, a group that is disproportionately poor and minority. Under current law and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) M+C reform option, M+C enrollment will decline by one million over the next three years, while the new Bush administration proposal would stabilize program enrollment. If M+C were eliminated, nearly a third of its members would end up in traditional Medicare without any additional coverage, and 18 percent would enroll in Medicaid.