Medicare Advantage Benefits, Cost-Sharing Requirements Vary Greatly, Says Report

However, Zirkelbach says studies have shown that Medicare Advantage delivers higher quality of care and customer satisfaction than traditional Medicare, in part because of additional programs, such as disease management and care coordination plans.

Steinberg says the new programs and benefits that Medicare Advantage offers often are designed to attract healthier people.

"So they will add things like vision tests, which is nice, but they will make up for that by raising the costs for things like inpatient hospital stays or skilled nursing facilities and that way the plans become less attractive for sicker people and more attractive for healthy people," Steinberg says. "That is a troubling trend for all of Medicare. You end up with a system where the sicker people stay away from these plans, and with good reason. But then you have to ask 'are these plans doing what they were designed to do, which was to provide high quality and affordable care for everyone?'"