Federal officials allowed more than 15,000 Medicare Advantage members to use special enrollment periods to change plans or join traditional Medicare in the last eight months because of "significant" provider cuts in their plans' networks, according to NPR. Medicare Advantage members have had the option of using a special enrollment period to switch under rules that took effect in 2015, yet the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services hasn't been very specific what degree of network changes would qualify, the article points out.
"What we're looking for is whether their selection of a plan was based on a network and the presence of certain physicians and that their selection would've been different" without those physicians, CMS Deputy Administrator Sean Cavanaugh tells NPR. Article