CMS: Medicare Advantage, Part D plans to see 4% pay bump in 2022

The Trump administration has issued rates for Medicare Advantage and Part D in 2022 several months early.

According to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) fact sheet, the agency is expecting payments to rise by 4.08% in 2022, up from 2.82% as proposed in its advance notice.

CMS said in an announcement that it is releasing the rates three months earlier than is normal to give plans more time to formulate bids amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Bids are due June 7.

Administrator Seema Verma said these results further highlight the administration's efforts to introduce greater flexibility into Medicare Advantage and Part D.

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“The vindication of our fresh approach to healthcare policy, one that discards the consensus of the last several decades—prescriptiveness, overregulation, and micromanagement from Washington D.C. at every turn—is complete and undeniable," Verma said in a statement. “CMS’ efforts to lower prices and improve benefits has delivered historic results.”

In the fact sheet, CMS also said that it will complete phasing in the 2020 CMS-HCC risk adjustment model as mandated under the 21st Century Cures Act. The agency first began rolling out the model for the 2020 plan year.

This will mark a departure from the 2021 plan year, for which 75% of risk scores were calculated using the 2020 model and 25% were calculated using the 2017 iteration of the CMS-HCC model.

As such, risk adjustment for 2022 will rely fully on Medicare Advantage encounter data and fee-for-service claims for diagnoses, CMS said.