A new State Scorecard on Medicare Performance, released today by the Commonwealth Fund, ranks Vermont as the best state in the country for how well Medicare serves its residents.
But the results come amid big changes to the state’s health insurance market as Medicare open enrollment kicks off for next year.
The report evaluated every state and the District of Columbia on 31 measures of Medicare performance, including: access to care, quality, costs, and health outcomes.
Vermont came out on top followed by Utah and Minnesota. Top-performing states had roughly half as many potentially preventable hospital admissions as states that ranked at the bottom, like Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky.
The report found fewer older Vermonters (16%) reported their health as fair or poor compared to the national average (25%).
The report also highlighted that only 14.3% of Medicare Advantage plans in Vermont require prior authorization for specialist visits or preventive care — significantly lower than the national average of 48.3%.
But data for the report was gathered before Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Healthcare announced that they were pulling out of the Medicare Advantage marketplace, something health experts say will leave Vermonters with fewer and more costly options.
