Do Medicare Advantage enrollees prefer plans with more prior authorization? On the one hand, one would think the answer is a clear ‘no’. Although higher levels of prior authorization may result in lower premiums, many enrollees may prefer this.
A paper by Marr, Trivedi, and Meyers (2026) aims to answer the question using beneficiary enrollment and contract-level prior authorization data. Using this data, they found that:
First, beneficiaries living in different regions of the country enrolled in contracts with widely varying prior authorization rates. Second, Hispanic, Asian, Black or African American, and dual-eligible beneficiaries were disproportionately likely to enroll in plans with higher prior authorization rates. Third, beneficiaries enrolled in contracts with lower prior authorization rates were more likely than beneficiaries enrolled in contracts with higher prior authorization rates to disenroll from their contract—either to another Medicare Advantage contract or to traditional Medicare. Beneficiaries exposed to the highest quartile of prior authorization rates were 4.7 percentage points more likely to disenroll than beneficiaries exposed to the lowest quartile, a difference of 44 percent. Higher enrollments suggest that beneficiaries are dissatisfied with plans that have higher prior authorization rates.
It appears that the inconvenience of prior authorization outweighs the cost savings for most Medicare Advantage enrollees. You can read the full paper here.
