CMS pitches 1.1% boost to Medicare Advantage payments
By Bob Herman
Modern Healthcare, February 20, 2015
The CMS has proposed increasing health insurers’ Medicare Advantage payment rates by 1.05% for 2016, a move that kicks off a 45-day dogfight in Washington before the rates are cemented.
The base rate was an 0.95% average decrease, but “when combined with expected growth in plan risk scores due to coding,” Advantage plans will actually receive the 1.05% hike in revenue next year, according to a release from the CMS posted late Friday afternoon. Risk scores relate to how Medicare pays for the health status of beneficiaries. CMS pays more for patients who have more health conditions and less for those who are healthier.
Like last year, Advantage plans that earn at least four stars out of five will receive a 5% bonus payment in 2016, the CMS said. Any plans with 3.5 stars or fewer will continue to get no additional payments.
Breaking from proposals in the previous two years, the CMS said it will not propose any adjustments to the use of home visits for patient risk assessments. Many Advantage plans diagnose the severity of patients’ illnesses at home instead of in a physician’s office. But this has raised concerns that many plans are falsely inflating the diagnoses in a bid to warrant higher payments for sicker members, a process called upcoding.
Medicare Advantage’s risk-assessment process has been under fire from policymakers and consumer advocates who argue private insurers are purposefully bilking money from the program, which covers 17.3 million people as of this month. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has said the risk scores of Advantage patients have grown more rapidly than those of regular fee-for-service beneficiaries, and the current risk-score payment reductions mandated by the Affordable Care Act may not be enough.
Humana, one of the largest Advantage insurers in the country, disclosed this week that it is facing increased scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department for its risk-adjustment practices.
Health insurers have already begun their Medicare Advantage lobbying campaign in the hope of extracting higher rates come April. The Coalition for Medicare Choices, part of America’s Health Insurance Plans, has aired several ads featuring seniors advocating for the private plans.
Many members of Congress have also weighed in on the process. A bipartisan group of 53 senators, led by Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), sent their own letter to Tavenner this week urging the agency to “minimize disruptions for beneficiaries enrolled in the MA program by maintaining payment levels and providing a stable policy environment for 2016.”
The health insurance industry also happens to be one of the top financial backers of Schumer and Crapo. Since 2009, health insurers have given more than $493,000 to Schumer’s campaigns and more than $234,000 to Crapo’s, according to OpenSecrets.org.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150220/NEWS/150229988
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CMS proposes 2016 payment and policy updates for Medicare Health and Drug Plans
CMS Press Release, February 20, 2015
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today released proposed changes for the coming year for the Medicare Advantage (MA) and Part D Prescription Drug Programs that will advance Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell’s vision of building a better, smarter health care system and moving the Medicare program, and the health care system at large, toward paying providers based on the quality, rather than the quantity of care they give patients.
The proposed changes reflect the commitment to a Medicare program that delivers better care, spends health care dollars more wisely and results in healthier people.
http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-releases/2015-Press-releases-items/2015-02-20-3.html
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NOTE TO: Medicare Advantage Organizations, Prescription Drug Plan Sponsors, and Other Interested Parties
SUBJECT: Advance Notice of Methodological Changes for Calendar Year (CY) 2016 for Medicare Advantage (MA) Capitation Rates, Part C and Part D Payment Policies and 2016 Call Letter
CMS, February 20, 2015
Section H. Medicare Advantage Coding Pattern Adjustment
Below we offer three analyses that strongly suggest that the health status of MA enrollees is no worse, and more likely is better, than the health status of FFS beneficiaries of similar age, gender, Medicaid, and institutional status. These include analyses of self-reported health status and mortality rates, as well as Part D drug information.
Self-Reported Health Status. Analysis of self-reported data on health status and on whether the respondent has ever been diagnosed with one of a variety of conditions from the 2006-2011 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) suggests that the average risk for MA enrollees is approximately 96% of the average risk for FFS beneficiaries.
Mortality Rates. Mortality rates for MA beneficiaries are significantly lower than mortality rates for FFS enrollees. For example, in 2012, the mortality rate in MA was 81% of the mortality rate in FFS. (It is possible that lower mortality rates result from better quality of care in MA, but it seems more likely, given the size of the difference, that this reflects, at least in part, relative health status.)
Part D Drug Information. MA enrollees are significantly less likely than FFS beneficiaries to be prescribed drugs that are predictive of high expenditures. HHS has used information from Part D data to construct risk scores for MA and FFS enrollees, and has found that MA enrollees are at significantly lower risk than demographically similar FFS beneficiaries.
Of the three sources of information that are independent of the diagnoses reported by MA plans, each suggests that MA enrollees are at similar or lower risk than demographically similar FFS beneficiaries.
CMS Advance Notice (172 pages): http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Health-Plans/MedicareAdvtgSpecRateStats/Downloads/Advance2016.pdf
Letter from U.S. Senate members to Marilyn Tavenner, CMS Administrator: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/20/medicare-advantage-prescription-drug-part-d-cms/23744123/
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
The 2016 base rate for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plan payments was to have decreased by 0.95%, phasing in a correction of the overpayments that have been made to the MA plans. Instead, CMS will increase the payment rates by 1.05%, a full 2.0% increase over the projected base rate. This is the fourth year in a row that CMS has violated the intent of ACA and other legislation to bring MA rates down to the equivalent of payments made in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program.
CMS’s Advance Notice provides three sources of evidence demonstrating that the MA patients are a healthier subset of patients than those in the traditional Medicare program. Since this results in adverse selection in the traditional Medicare program, the rates paid to MA plans should be even lower than payments made in the traditional program, not higher.
The record is now clear that the MA plans have been using various methods of upcoding the severity of illness of their customers (known to us as patients) thus qualifying for higher risk adjustment payments. One of the latest schemes is to make home visits, not to provide more care but merely to try to find more diagnoses to be used in inflating risk adjustments – diagnoses that do not appear in the billing documents from physicians and hospitals! Although this abuse is widely recognized, CMS said “it will not propose any adjustments to the use of home visits for patient risk assessments.” This is at a time that the Justice Department has increased its scrutiny of these likely criminal acts.
As if we didn’t have enough reason to be disgusted with our government, over 50 Senators have sent a letter to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner requesting preservation of the overpayments made to the MA plans. The rhetoric of the letter is clearly that of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) – the lobby organization for the health insurance industry. To no surprise the lead signers of the letter, Senators Mike Crapo and Charles Schumer, between them have received from the insurance industry close to three-quarters of a million dollars.
The Coalition for Medicare Choices has already begun its intense campaign to drum up public support for MA overpayments, of course disguised as protecting Medicare. It surely surprises no one that this organization is headquartered not only in the same building as AHIP, but it even shares the same suite.
Perhaps even more ominous is the statement in the CMS press release that states that the proposed changes “will advance Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell’s vision of building a better, smarter health care system and moving the Medicare program, and the health care system at large, toward paying providers based on the quality, rather than the quantity of care they give patients.” And the the Senators’ letter that states, “At the time of broad agreement on the need to shift U.S. health care to focus on care coordination, quality, and value-based payments, it would be counterproductive to jeopardize a program that is already driven by and aligned toward those goals.” This political support of MA plans clearly advances the agenda of privatizing Medicare – only one step away from converting to a defined contribution premium support (voucher) program – the dream of the private insurance industry.
So who is paying the higher costs of these private MA plans? We, the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program who are paying higher Part B premiums to help fund this gift to the private insurers.
If there were even a thread of moral fiber left in D.C., instead of shamelessly supporting overpayments to the private insurance industry, our representatives would be advocating for using those funds to improve benefits for all Medicare beneficiaries. Under that scenario, the private insurers who are keeping three-fourths of the overpayments, would be dismissed. But then Crapo and Schumer would likely decide that three-quarters of a million dollars is too dear of a price to pay for a strand of moral fiber.