CMS has published its Medicare Advantage final rate notices for 2024, and some retirees are pushing back on New York City's MA plan for city employees.
These are 10 updates about Medicare Advantage Becker's has reported since March 20.
- Medicare Advantage enrollment continued to accelerate in 2022. Early numbers from CMS had indicated that growth began to slow in 2022, but updated numbers from the agency showed there are 2.7 million new Medicare Advantage members enrolled for 2023 coverage, up from 2.3 million in 2022.
- CMS will move ahead with Medicare Advantage risk adjustment changes that payers and some provider groups opposed, but the agency will phase in the model over three years. Payers were against the coding adjustments, which industry groups said would amount to a cut in funding for the program.
- Cigna-HealthSpring Life & Health Insurance Company received an estimated $6.24 million in Medicare Advantage overpayments in 2016 and 2017, according to an HHS Office of Inspector General audit.
- After a yearslong bureaucratic battle, New York City officials approved an Aetna Medicare Advantage plan for its retired municipal employees, though the plan could be headed for more court battles. Here's why some retirees are wary of employer-sponsored MA plans.
- Two senators questioned insurers' claims that CMS' Medicare Advantage rates would cut member benefits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, sent letters to the chief executives of seven major payers, calling the profits major companies make from the Medicare Advantage program "outrageous."
- Reduced Medicare Advantage benchmark payments would likely have a small effect on premiums, cost-sharing and benefits offered by MA plans, a study published in Health Affairs found.
- Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplement enrollees both reported high levels of satisfaction with their coverage in a survey from eHealth.
- Geisinger Health Plan received $6.5 million in Medicare Advantage overpayments in 2016 and 2017, according to an audit from HHS' Office of the Inspector General.
- Clever Care, a startup integrating Western medicine and Eastern wellness benefits in Medicare Advantage, clinched $41 million in a funding round led by Google Ventures.
- Medicare Advantage plans should be aware of fraudsters turning their efforts to private plans, HHS' Inspector General Christi Grimm said.