Medicare Part C Update from 2021 Medicare Trustees Report

Usgovernmentspending.com has updated its estimate of Medicare Part C, the Medicare Advantage program using data in the Medicare Trustees Report of 2020 that was released September 1, 2021. You can see the results here.

The Budget of the United States Government reports Medicare outlays as a single line item, subfunction 571 in Historical Table 3.2, but Usgovernmentspending.com shows a breakdown of the Medicare program into its constituent parts, as follows:

1. Part A: Hospital Insurance
2. Part B: Supplementary Medical Insurance
3. Part C: Medicare Advantage
4. Part D: SMI Drug Plan

These data are constructed from data in the Public Budget Database, which provide details on Part A, Part B, and Part D, with Part C embedded in the Part A and Part B outlays. Part C is constructed from data in Table IV.C2 in the Medicare Trustees Report 2021 which reports the payments made to private Medicare health plans and the projected payments in future years.

You can inspect the extracted data from Medicare Trustees Reports Table IV.C2 here. And see the blog entry that introduced the Medicare Part C breakout to usgovernmentspending.com here.

Here is a breakdown of Medicare budgeted outlays on usgovernmentspending.com for FY 2021 before and after today's update.

Budgeted Outlays in percent GDP	Part A	Part B	Part C	Part D	Total Medicare
FY2021 before update	1.24	0.84	1.27	0.34	3.71% GDP
FY2021 after update	1.22	0.83	1.30	0.34	3.71% GDP

The update indicates a  small increase in budgeted Medicare Part C over the previous estimate in the Medicare Trustees Report in 2020.