Cortez Masto joins bipartisan call for Medicare Advantage transparency 

More than half of eligible Nevadans are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans — private insurer plans that the federal government contracts with, but those plans have been under increasing scrutiny. 

U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) penned a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure to strengthen the oversight of these plans and improve transparency. 

The bipartisan group of senators advocated for CMS to collect and release data from Medicare Advantage insurers on prior authorization requests, denials, and appeals by type of service (traditional Medicare doesn’t require prior authorization), justification of prior authorization denials, timeliness of prior authorization decisions, out-of-pocket costs and provider payment information and plan comparison information. 

“Much of this information is collected for internal purposes only or made available with a significant time delay, which further hurts transparency efforts,” the senators wrote in the Dec. 7 letter. “In both cases, a lack of public data prevents seniors and people with disabilities from making informed decisions about which plan fits their needs.” 

Several Medicare Advantage plans have been embroiled in scandals from predatory marketing to submitting inaccurate patient diagnosis data for additional payments from the CMS and overcharging taxpayers between $88 billion to $140 billion a year, according to a report released earlier this fall by Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of physicians and health care workers that advocates for a single-payer health care system. 

“In the last few years, federal watchdogs have released numerous reports examining concerning trends in MA,” the senators wrote in the letter. “These findings raise important questions about ensuring the integrity and fiscal sustainability of the Medicare Advantage program.”