By Thomas Beaton

February 23, 2018 - The growth of the Medicare Advantage (MA) market requires the release of more claims data to evaluate the commercial and government impact of the program, according to a recent JAMA commentary from the Health Care Cost Institute, ProPublica, and the VA.

"Despite the important and increasing role of Medicare Advantage plans, there is fairly little insight into the relative value Medicare Advantage provides to beneficiaries or the funder, the US taxpayer," the authors said, noting that MA beneficiaries account for a third of the entire Medicare population.

"This is attributable mainly to a lack of access to comprehensive claims or encounter-level data regarding the Medicare Advantage program for researchers, or even more aggregated information that could be made available to the general public."