Medicare uses information from member satisfaction surveys, plans, and health care providers to give overall performance star ratings to Medicare Advantage plans. These ratings are an incentive for Medicare plans to improve plan quality by making it easier for beneficiaries to compare and choose plans based on quality and performance.  (You can read more about what the star ratings measure here.)

The chart below is a breakdown by health plan type for all 2015 Medicare Advantage plans.



n/a means that these plans have not yet received a quality star rating.  Either the plan is too new, or there is insufficient data to calculate a star rating.
*Medicare Advantage plans both with and without prescription drug coverage are included in the numbers above (but if the same contract has both with and without prescription drug coverage, the plan is only counted once).
**A star rating of 3 means average performance. Star rating definitions.
****Medicare uses the term plan(s) to mean the contract identifier associated with the plan.  In the chart above the total plans is the total number of unique contract id (ex: H1234 or R1234). The total number of plans includes plans that either did not have enough data to calculate a summary score or were too new to be measured.

From the table above, we can see that all of the  Medicare Cost plans that have a star rating, have a rating above the 3.0 Medicare benchmark with the vast majority of plans earning a 4.5-5 star rating. 

Of the 383 local HMO plans, 5% or 18 plans, have a rating that falls below the 3.0 star rating benchmark and only nine (9) plans (2%) have a 5-star (excellent) rating.  These 9 plans would qualify for the 5-star special enrollment period.

There are 123 local PPO plans, of which eight (8) fall below 3.0 stars (8%) and no local PPO plans have a 5-star rating. The majority of the local PPO plans fall within the 3.5-4 star range.

The star ratings for regional PPO plans are slightly lower than local PPO plans. This could be related to the relatively small number of regional plans verses local PPO plans. Only one plan has a rating below the 3.0 star benchmark and nine (9) plans had a star rating between 3 to 4 stars.

PFFS plans are also at the 3 to 4 stars rating level, with no plans below 3 stars.

In summary, 31%  of all Medicare Advantage plans did not receive a rating, only 5% of all Medicare Advantage plans fell at or below a 3.0 star rating with the majority of plans clustering between 3.5 and 4 stars.