Humana Hit Hard: Judge Upholds Medicare Advantage Star Cut, Stock Slides
Lawsuit Outcome and Court Ruling Humana (the second‐largest Medicare Advantage insurer) sued CMS in July after its star rating unexpectedly plunged. The insurer argued that CMS unfairly flagged three interpreter calls as failures (with no callback allowed), causing a 4.5-to-3.5 star drop reuters.com healthcaredive.com. On Oct. 14, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor (Northern Texas) rejected Humana’s arguments reuters.com. He found that CMS had acted “in accordance with its guidelines” and did not act arbitrarily fiercehealthcare.com. In particular, the judge upheld CMS’s no-callbacks policy for those language-line test calls as lawful healthcaredive.com. The case was dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning Humana can’t
