
Two Key CMS Announcements MA Plans Must Follow
Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are going to want to take note of two recent HPMS memos from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Each touches on major areas of controversy for the program. Supplemental Benefits User Group CMS will host a user group to provide an overview of supplemental benefits data submission for encounter data records on September 26, 2024, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET. You need to register in advance. See the flyer distributed with the September 10 HPMS memo on the topic. The issue of supplemental benefits is an explosive one right now. Opponents of MA say that MA plans are submitting bids that misrepresent supplemental benefit utilization and thereby inflating their margins. CMS has little to go by because encounter data for supplemental benefits is rarely submitted. CMS did two things to attack the controversial issue. First, it issued a memo requiring plans to submit