CMS to blame for Part D marketing lapses?

The USA's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been criticized for its "near-total failure," according to Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Max Baucus (Democrat, Montana), to provide appropriate sample documents to health care insurers in the run up to the launch of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit in 2006 (Marketletters passim).

Although a CMS spokesman told the Associated Press that most of the problems have been resolved, following an Office of the Inspector General report, it also emerged that many marketing materials were not reviewed by the CMS within 18 months.