MCOs continue to abandon Medicare
Although fewer seniors will be forced to switch to new coverage optionsnext year than did last January, MCOs still are dropping out of the Medicare+Choiceprogram at a disturbing rate. Aggressive efforts by Tom Scully, administratorof the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), encouraged somehealth plans to stick with the program for now, but dozens of MCOs abandonedor curtailed service areas when they filed cost proposals for contract year2002 in September. Consequently, 536,000 seniors will have to find new coverageby January, much less than the 934,000 affected by MCO departures last year.But many of those plans that remain are reducing optional benefits or raisingpremiums in order to continue coverage.
In this episode of the "Meet the Board" podcast series, Briana Contreras, Managed Healthcare Executive editor, speaks with Ateev Mehrotra, a member of the MHE editorial advisory board and a professor of healthcare policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mehtrotra is also a hospitalist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In the discussion, Contreras gets to know Mehrotra more on a personal level and picks his brain on some of his research interests including telehealth, alternative payment models and price transparency.
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