Industry experts gathered last week at the Medicare Marketing & Sales Summit in Las Vegas to discuss the financial, regulatory, operational, and human forces reshaping Medicare Advantage. The conference highlighted trends, challenges, and strategies for navigating a rapidly evolving marketplace. Here are four takeaways from the event.
Be prepared for potential marketing and data-sharing deregulation
During his presentation, Neil Patil, senior fellow and policy director of the Medicare Policy Initiative at Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reform (CHIR), described a major deregulatory shift in the marketing, enrollment, and data-sharing provisions of the 2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D Proposed rule.
Among the proposals:
- The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to remove the requirement that third-party marketing organizations (TPMOs) refer beneficiaries to a local State Health Insurance Assistance Program for information on all plan options. If finalized, it is possible that there will be lower exposure to Medicare Advantage plans if they are not affiliated with TPMOs.
- CMS intends to remove existing beneficiary outreach requirements implemented during the Biden administration, including provisions that prohibit marketing events from taking place within 12 hours of an educational event in the same location, personal marketing appointments from taking place until 48 hours after the beneficiary Scope of Appointment (SOA) is signed, and not allowing Medicare Advantage plans, agents, and brokers from making SOA forms available to beneficiaries or accepting them from beneficiaries at educational events.
- The agency also wants to allow Medicare Advantage plans to use superlatives in their marketing and advertisements. Currently, plans are prohibited from using unsubstantiated themes or statements in their advertisements except when used in a logo or tag. While plans would still be barred from using misleading marketing but would allow plans to use a superlative even if you don't have the documentation or data to support those statements.
- CMS proposes to shorten sales and marketing call retention from 10 to six years and remove the requirement to provide the Notice of Availability in 15 languages.
Use AI to increase efficiency but with human intervention
During the Women’s Leadership Lunch N’ Learn session, panelists emphasized that technology should create space for more human-centered work, not less of it.
Cristi Vredenburg, vice president of enrollment, product, and marketing fir ATRIO Health Plans, described moving from highly manual processes to greater automation, freeing teams to focus less on troubleshooting and more on strategic planning.
“Automation has been around for a while. Every year, it seems to get a little bit better, cleaner,
and more efficient,” she said. “A few years ago… we were very old school. We did so many things manually. We started introducing more automation in our processes. And we immediately got returns. We immediately had more time to do so many other things…I’m doing less troubleshooting and doing more strategic thinking and strategic planning.”
Panel moderator Peggy Sullivan said she’s used AI to develop conference presentations. It’s “amazing what you can do in less time” when you lean into it,” she said.
However, panelists cautioned that AI “doesn’t have judgment” and “doesn’t have feelings.” To use AI responsibly, organizations must keep the members’ voices and organizational values at the center. The message: Leverage efficiency but retain human oversight and guardrails.
Trust, navigation, and communication gaps remain life-or-death issues
Roderick Kersch, vice president of health plan sales at WEX Benefits, led a panel featuring three Medicare Advantage patient advocates whose personal testimony grounded the policy discussions in lived experience.
Panelists described sudden disenrollment, coverage lapses that threatened access to essential care, and out-of-pocket long-term care costs. Doris Maldonado Méndez, who has been a Medicare consumer for more than two decades, put it plainly: “Trust, for me, is an abstract. It’s survival.”
After losing her coverage while relying on
on continuous anticoagulant monitoring, she said, “I didn’t know if I would live to attend this conference… I didn’t know if I was going to reach my daughter’s upcoming fourth birthday. So that’s the level of risk we’re talking about.”
The panelists also discussed hours they spent navigating fragmented systems, outdated provider directories, multiple patient portals, and denials tied to incomplete. “We don’t have proactive navigation systems,” Maldonado Méndez said. “Communication within your silos is paramount to all of us.”
Karen Edwards echoed the urgency around access and responsiveness: “There has to be an improved mode of communication…I’m a senior. My time is very precious.” She added, “You have to be more human-centered.”
She called for year-round, consistent customer service rather than enrollment-season outreach. “It’s hopefully not a helicopter; that means you swoop in in December,
and I won’t hear from you again until the next enrollment period,” Edwards said. “Let’s not do that."
Connie Lee Montgomery emphasized the need to “listen deeply and listen to learn, not to respond.”
She urged plans to hire patient navigators or a chief patient officer who is able to speak peer to peer to others who may come through your programs or come through your agency and need to speak with the patient.”
Embrace the idea of uncertainty to unlock opportunity
Keynote speaker Meridith Elliott Powell delivered an empowering presentation on embracing uncertainty, noting that the pace of change has increased 183 percent in just four years.
“If you are burned out, exhausted, or overwhelmed, you should be, because the pace of change is moving four times faster than it did just four years ago,” she said. To thrive, she encouraged attendees to build resilience, competitive strength, and confidence.
Powell emphasized that success starts with a relentless vision: “When uncertainty shows up, you have no control over how you will get there, but you have all the control over the destination. We call this a relentless vision,” she said. “It means it is a vision you are so focused on that, no matter the challenges…your mind will find a way to get there.” With this focus, uncertainty becomes an opportunity rather than a source of fear.
Like Montgomery, Powell also emphasized listening and connecting as central strategies. “The most powerful skill you can have, the path to growth and profitability in today's marketplace, comes down to one thing: your ability to listen. Your ability to listen to your network, your ability to listen to your customers, and your ability to listen to your team members," Powell said.
Daily and quarterly routines, such as reading your vision three times a day, performing a 30-minute quarterly review, and calling your top 10 customers, are tools she suggested to maintain focus and uncover opportunities.