There probably was no good way for CMS to deal with its annual spring Medicare Advantage and Part D conference in light of sequestration-related budget cuts and furloughs. What has been in previous years an in-person (as well as webcast) conference with no registration fee could not be cost-justified now, so the only alternatives were to not hold the conference at all or to make it webcast only. Read more

Many large for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers are working more closely with providers than ever before, but perhaps only Universal American Corp. has taken the concept of a partnership this far. The MA sponsor is working with providers — especially long-term care facility operators — to start MA Special Needs Plans in rural areas, including ones in which the new SNPs might be competing against Universal American’s own MA plans. The insurer takes the actual risk, runs the insurance functions... Read more

It just keeps getting worse for Universal Health Care Group, Inc. In the most recent development yesterday, federal agents raided the St. Petersburg, Fla., headquarters of the Medicare Advantage insurer that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization Feb. 6. The raid came just one week after a state circuit court judge ordered two major units of the company into receivership, followed by liquidation April 1, even though a unit of CarePoint Insurance Co. had won a bankruptcy court auction... Read more

Just when we thought it was finally over, it isn’t. Less than two days after a federal bankruptcy court judge in Tampa, Fla., on March 11 approved the sale of Universal Health Care Group, Inc. over the objections of politically connected minority shareholders to an affiliate of CarePoint Insurance Co., a state judge in Tallahassee ruled that two subsidiaries of Universal are insolvent. Read more

Compared with what happened in the preliminary 2014 pay-rates notice issued Feb. 15, Medicare Advantage plans may have gotten away relatively easy in the proposed Medicare minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) rule released the same day. Read more

Florida may be home to the biggest group of successful Medicare Advantage entrepreneurs in the nation. And three of them were at the forefront of an unusual tale of reversal of fortune and on-and-off acquisitions that unfolded, aided by some nudges from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FOIR), late last month and early this month. At the center of the developments was A.K. Desai, M.D., who launched what is now Universal Health Care Group, Inc. in 2002 and rapidly built it into a St.... Read more

The biggest points to be made about the Medicare Advantage enrollment data released by CMS Jan. 17 relate to what they’re not. Since the figures for the Jan. 1 pay date run through only Dec. 5, 2012, and not through Dec. 7 as they did when CMS released similar data last January, they do not cover all of the Annual Election Period (AEP). Moreover, the days they leave out are what should prove to be the two busiest days of the AEP, namely the last two. Read more