US Medicare Agency to Appeal UnitedHealth ‘Star Rating’ Decision

The US Medicare agency plans to appeal a federal judge’s November 2024 ruling that the Biden administration wrongly downgraded UnitedHealth Group’s 2025 “star rating,” a potentially lucrative Medicare Advantage quality measure.

The insurance giant and its affiliates filed suit in October claiming the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services lowered the company’s “star rating” based on an “arbitrary and capricious assessment” of how UnitedHealth’s call center “handled a single phone call that lasted less than ten minutes.”

In November, Judge Jeremy Kernodle of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, partially granted UnitedHealth’s motion for summary judgment, ...