Fierce Health Payers August 26, 2020
The Trump administration aimed to curtail use of a policy intended to help ensure natural disasters don’t wreck the calculation of star ratings for Medicare Advantage and Part D plans.
The reason is the policy, only intended to help a few plans, now applies to almost all plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The change was tucked into a massive emergency regulation released Tuesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on COVID-19. The regulation installed new reporting requirements for hospitals and labs surrounding COVID-19, amid other changes.
CMS posts online star ratings on each MA and Part D plan based on a series of quality and performance measures. The rating is also used to determine the amount of...