Musk/Trump Regime posts what they claim to be Jan 2025 Medicare enrollment data

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services just published updated enrollment data for Medicare, adding January 2024 to the data archive.

So far, after a 2-month initial delay, the Musk/Trump Regime has been posting updated Medicare enrollment data roughly once per month. We'll see if that continues.

Whether the data posted since January 20, 2025 is accurate or not, I can't say for certain, but at least they're updating it...and so far, at least, I don't see anything in their November 2024, December 2024 or January 2025 reports which is setting off any obvious red flags.

As of this writing, the same can't be said for the monthly Medicaid/CHIP enrollment reports, which are usually updated the same day as the Medicare reports, but which have remained stuck on October 2024 since before Trump was inaugurated in January.

In any event, according to the latest report, as of January 2025:

• Total Medicare beneficiaries are up to 68.5 million (up 31K since December)
• Traditional/FFM Medicare beneficiaries are at 33.6 million (down ~424K since December)
• Medicare Advantage beneficiaries reached 34.9 million (up ~455K since December)
• 11.92 million Medicare enrollees were "Dual Eligibles"...that is, enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid.

While the drop in FFS & increase in Advantage enrollment is unusually high for month-over-month changes, these are actually pretty standard for the January reports each year, as you can see in the graph below. I expect much more modest month-over-month changes in the next report.

After crossing the 50% threshold about a year ago, Medicare Advantage has now been, for good or for bad, the default option for Medicare enrollment ever since, with nearly 51% of all enrollees now utilizing Advantage plans.

It's also worth noting that, given the Musk/Trump Admin's obsession with erasing any reference or data regarding gender, race or ethnicity, this first Medicare enrollment report still includes a breakout of those demographic factors.