©MedBillsAssist™ Blogs

Posts Tagged ‘Medicare Advantage Plans’

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) erroneously notified 400 thousand Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries that some MA plans will no longer be offered next year in service areas where plans will continue to operate. CMS blamed the affected plans, contending that they hadn’t properly filled out forms.
According to CMS spokesman the issue is limited in scope in terms of number of organizations affected and beneficiaries impacted. Don’t you feel better already? It only affected 400 thousand seniors and a limited number of insurance companies.
A little known fact in this matter is that MA plans aren’t allowed to send out communications without CMS approval. Therefore they are not allowed to correct CMS erroneous letter, unless it is approved by CMS.
Kindly, CMS agreed to review any written notice insurance companies (MA Plans) would like to send to their members.
One must ponder about this. Was this a simple problem of incomplete paperwork? Was this an attempt to get beneficiaries back to traditional Medicare? Was this an elaborate attempt to question MA plans reputation? We will never know…