Medicare to recalculate quality ratings of Medicare Advantage plans, WSJ reports

The federal government plans to redo this year’s quality ratings of private Medicare plans, a move that would deliver hundreds of millions in additional bonus payments to insurers next year, The Wall Street Journal’s Anna Wilde Mathews reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could be announced as soon as Thursday. It comes in the wake of two court rulings that faulted the agency’s ratings, in cases filed by insurers SCAN Health Plan and Elevance Health, the author notes. By paving the way for higher payments, the CMS move would provide a win for Medicare insurers at a time when their business is under pressure from rising healthcare costs and rates for next year that came in lower than investors had expected, the publication adds. Publicly traded companies in the space include CVS Health (CVS), Centene (CNC), Cigna (CI), Elevance Health (ELV), Humana (HUM), Molina Healthcare (MOH) and UnitedHealth (UNH).