Insulin Costs May Be Capped in a Medicare Program

Posted by johnnyjerry on March 19th, 2020

In effect, through this rulemaking, CMS established that the failure to achieve at least three stars constitutes a substantial failure to comply with an MA or Part D contract, forming the basis for a CMS-initiated termination. Given the significant impact of low Star Ratings on an organization's ability to continue to hold an MA or Part D contract, we propose to adopt failure to achieve at least a three-star Part

C or Part D summary rating in the set of Star Ratings CMS issued during the 12-month review period (CMS currently issues ratings in October of each year) as a basis for denying an application based on past performance.

Establishing Pharmacy Performance Measure Reporting Requirements

If an MA plan's cost sharing exceeds the applicable limit for any of the length of stay scenarios, CMS considers the MA plans' cost sharing as discriminatory under current § 422. 100. We are proposing new § 422. 100(f)(iv)(A) through (D) to codify this longstanding policy for the cost sharing established by an MA plan for inpatient acute and psychiatric services, with modifications to take into account cost sharing expenditures for beneficiaries with diagnoses of ESRD in setting the limits and to set a limit for MA plans that use the intermediate MOOP limit. Under proposed paragraph (f)(iv)(A), an MA plan is required to have cost sharing for inpatient acute and psychiatric benefits that do not exceed the limits set in § 422. 100(f)(iv).

PART 417—HEALTH MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATIONS, COMPETITIVE MEDICAL

PLANS, AND HEALTH CARE PREPAYMENT PLANS

The 70% paid by the drug manufacturer combined with the 25% you pay, count toward your TrOOP or Donut Hole exit point. CMS proposes to limit MA plans that are Dual Eligible Special Needs Plan (D-SNP) “look-alikes. †These “look-alikeâ€​             plans, which​ have similar levels of dual eligible enrollment as D-SNPs but are not subject to the federal regulatory and state contracting requirements applicable to D-SNPs, circumvent federal regulatory and state contracting requirements that otherwise apply to D-SNP products. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act created D-SNPs to allow for Medicare Advantage (MA) products that exclusively serve individuals dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. D-SNPs must meet a number of additional requirements, relative to non-SNP MA plans, related to health risk assessments, models of care, and Medicaid integration.

Since the beginning of the Part D program, CMS has consistently tried to ensure that Part D sponsors only market the number and type of PBPs necessary to offer beneficiaries meaningfully different plan options and allow them to carefully examine all of the plan offerings.

We propose to include 100 percent of ESRD costs instead of a gradual transition as the difference in median amounts without ESRD costs and with 100 percent of ESRD costs for contract year 2022 is only (9 versus 5).

In our April 2018 final rule, we defined specialty tier in regulation at § 423. 560 to mean a formulary cost-sharing tier dedicated to very high-cost Part D drugs and biological products that exceed a cost threshold established by the Secretary (83 FR 16509). To improve transparency, AARP Medicare supplement plans 2021 we propose to codify current methodologies for calculations relative to the specialty tier, with some changes. As noted previously, it was necessary to establish the composition of a specialty tier in order to effectuate specialty tier exceptions and anti-discrimination policies.