Medicare Program; Changes to the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program for Contract Year 2024-Remaining Provisions and Contract Year 2025 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Medicare Cost Plan Program, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE); Correcting Amendment

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services</SUBAGY> <CFR>42 CFR Parts 417, 422, 423, and 460</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CMS-4201-F4 and CMS-4205-F3]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0938-AV24 and 0938-AU96</RIN> <SUBJECT>Medicare Program; Changes to the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program for Contract Year 2024—Remaining Provisions and Contract Year 2025 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Medicare Cost Plan Program, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE); Correcting Amendment</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; correcting amendment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document corrects technical and typographical errors in the final rule that appeared in the April 23, 2024 <E T="04">Federal Register</E> titled “Medicare Program; Changes to the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program for Contract Year 2024—Remaining Provisions and Contract Year 2025 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Medicare Cost Plan Program, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE).” The effective date of the final rule was June 3, 2024. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This correcting amendment is effective August 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Carly Medosch, (410) 786-8633—General Questions. Naseem Tarmohamed, (410) 786-0814—Part C and Cost Plan Issues. Lucia Patrone, (410) 786-8621—Part D Issues. Kristy Nishimoto, (206) 615-2367—Beneficiary Enrollment and Appeal Issues. Kelley Ordonio, (410) 786-3453—Parts C and D Payment Issues. Hunter Coohill, (720) 853-2804—Enforcement Issues. Lauren Brandow, (410) 786-9765—PACE Issues. Sara Klotz, (410) 786-1984—D-SNP Issues. Joe Strazzire, (410) 786-2775—RADV Audit Appeals Issues. <E T="03">PartCandDStarRatings@cms.hhs.gov</E> —Parts C and D Star Ratings Issues. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> In FR Doc. FR 2024-07105 of April 23, 2024 (89 FR 30448), the final rule titled “Medicare Program; Changes to the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program for Contract Year 2024—Remaining Provisions and Contract Year 2025 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, Medicare Cost Plan Program, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE)”, there were several typographical and technical errors that are identified and corrected in this correcting amendment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of Errors</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of Errors in the Preamble</HD> On page 30448, we inadvertently omitted the applicability date specific to the Programs of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) Past Performance (§§ 460.18 and 460.19) provisions. On page 30524, we erroneously included language regarding a proposed provision that was not being finalized. On page 30626, in Table FC-2, we made a technical error in a value presented in Table FC-2. On page 30712, we are correcting an inadvertent error in a reference. On page 30766, we inadvertently omitted language regarding the changes being finalized in § 460.120(g). On page 30797 and 30798, we made a few typographical errors in Table J9. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Summary of Errors in the Regulations Text</HD> On pages 30816, 30818, 30819, 30829, 30831, and 30832, we are correcting typographical and technical errors in the amendatory instructions by setting forth amendatory instructions, regulations text or both for §§ 422.74(d)(4)(i), 422.102(f)(4), 422.116(f)(1), 422.2274(c)(13), <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> 423.44(d)(2)(iii) through (viii), and 423.100. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  CMS acknowledges that certain changes to its agent-broker compensation regulations, which were finalized as part of the April 2024 final rule, are the subject of pending litigation. On July 3, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued nationwide preliminary injunctions in <E T="03">Americans for Beneficiary Choice</E> v. <E T="03">HHS,</E> No. 4:24-cv-00439, and <E T="03">Council for Medicare Choice</E> v. <E T="03">HHS,</E> No. 4:24-cv-00446, which enjoined the implementation of the changes to §§ 422.2274(a), (c), (d), and (e) and 423.2274(a), (c), (d), (e). For additional guidance, please see the July 18, 2024 HPMS memorandum, “Updated: Contract Year 2025 Agent and Broker Compensation Rates, Submissions, and Training and Testing Requirements,” available at <E T="03">https://www.cms.gov/about-cms/information-systems/hpms/hpms-memos-archive-weekly/hpms-memos-wk-3-july-15-19.</E> </FTNT> On page 30818, we are also correcting a typographical error in the paragraph reference in § 422.102(f)(4)(iii)(B). On page 30828, we are correcting typographical and technical errors in the regulations text of § 422.2267(e)(34). On pages 30837 and 30839, we are correcting typographical errors in the numbering of paragraphs in §§ 423.501 and 423.522, respectively. On page 30841, we are correcting typographical errors in the regulations text of § 423.584. On page 30843, we are correcting the inadvertent omission of § 460.12(b)(3) in the regulations text. On page 30848, in the regulations text for § 460.120(h)(4), we are correcting a technical error in referencing other applicable requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking and Delay in Effective Date</HD> Under 5 U.S.C. 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the agency is required to publish a notice of the proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the provisions of a rule take effect. Specifically, 5 U.S.C. 553 requires the agency to publish a notice of the proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> that includes a reference to the legal authority under which the rule is proposed, and the terms and substance of the proposed rule or a description of the subjects and issues involved. Further, 5 U.S.C. 553 requires the agency to give interested parties the opportunity to participate in the rulemaking through public comment on a proposed rule. Similarly, section 1871(b)(1) of the Act requires the Secretary to provide for notice of the proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and provide a period of not less than 60 days for public comment for rulemaking to carry out the administration of the Medicare program under title XVIII of the Act. In addition, section 553(d) of the APA, and section 1871(e)(1)(B)(i) of the Social Security Act (the Act) mandate a 30-day delay in effective date after issuance or publication of a rule. Sections 553(b)(B) and 553(d)(3) of the APA provide for exceptions from the notice and comment and delay in effective date APA requirements. In cases in which these exceptions apply, sections 1871(b)(2)(C) and 1871(e)(1)(B)(ii) of the Act, also provide exceptions from the notice and 60-day comment period and delay in effective date requirements of the Act. Section 553(b)(B) of the APA and section 1871(b)(2)(C) of the Act authorize an agency to dispense with normal rulemaking requirements for good cause if the agency makes a finding that the notice and comment process are impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest. In addition, both section 553(d)(3) of the APA and section 1871(e)(1)(B)(ii) of the Act allow the agency to avoid the 30-day delay in effective date where such delay is contrary to the public interest and an agency includes a statement of support. We believe that this correcting amendment does not constitute a rule that would be subject to the notice and comment or delayed effective date requirements of the APA or section 1871 of the Act. This correcting amendment corrects typographical and technical errors in the preamble and regulatory text of the final rule but does not make substantive changes to the policies that were adopted in the final rule. As a result, this correcting amendment is intended to ensure that the information in the final rule accurately reflects the policies adopted in that final rule. In addition, even if this were a rule to which the notice and comment procedures and delayed effective date requirements applied, we find that there is good cause to waive such requirements. Undertaking further notice and comment procedures to incorporate the regulatory text correction in this document into the final rule or delaying the effective date would be unnecessary, as we are not altering our policies or regulatory changes, but rather, we are simply implementing the policies and regulatory changes that we previously proposed, requested comment on, and subsequently finalized. This final rule correcting amendment is intended solely to ensure that the final rule and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) accurately reflect policies and regulatory changes that have been adopted through rulemaking. Furthermore, such notice and comment procedures would be contrary to the public interest because it is in the public's interest to ensure that the final rule accurately reflects our policies and regulatory changes. Therefore, we believe we have good cause to waive the notice and comment and effective date requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Correction of Errors</HD> In FR Doc. FR 2024-07105 of April 23, 2024 (89 FR 30448), make the following corrections: <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Corrections to the Preamble</HD> 1. On page 30448, second column, first full paragraph (continuation of the Applicability Dates), last line, the paragraph is corre ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━