Health insurers have increased the number of private Medicare plan enrollees they cover in the past year, in spite of complaints about changes in the way the government pays insurers.
Overall Medicare Advantage plan enrollment rose 8.3 percent between March 2014 and March 2015, to 17.3 million, according to analysts at Mark Farrah Associates.
Enrollment at carriers with more than 250,000 Medicare Advantage enrollees rose 8.2 percent, to 11.6 million.
The big players continued to cover about 67 percent of all Medicare Advantage program enrollees.
The Mark Farrah analysts have based those figures on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data.