- CMS (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) rates most Medicare Advantage and Part D plans on a 1-to-5-star scale every year based on dozens of quality and performance measures.
- Star Ratings look at things like preventive screenings, chronic condition management, member satisfaction, complaints, and customer service — not any single number like premium or copay.
- Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder is the only source you should trust for a specific plan’s current rating, since ratings are recalculated annually and older numbers go stale fast.
- A plan rated 5 stars in your area gives you a Special Enrollment Period to switch into it once during the year, outside the usual enrollment windows.
- A high Star Rating tells you about average member experience across a whole plan population — it does not tell you whether your own doctors are in-network or your own prescriptions are covered.
- Ratings can rise or fall from one year to the next, so it’s worth rechecking before every enrollment decision rather than assuming a past rating still holds.
- Original Medicare paired with a Medigap policy isn’t rated on this same bundled 1-to-5-star scale, because it isn’t sold as a single packaged plan the way Medicare Advantage is.
Medicare Advantage Star Ratings are a 1-to-5-star quality score CMS assigns each year to most Medicare Advantage and Part D plans, based on measures like preventive care, chronic condition management, and member satisfaction. In Connecticut, they’re a useful starting filter at 65 — but only one piece of a bigger decision.
What Is the Medicare Star Ratings System?
Every fall, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — the federal agency that runs the Medicare program — publishes updated Star Ratings for nearly every Medicare Advantage plan and standalone Part D prescription drug plan sold in the country, including the plans available here in Connecticut. Each plan gets an overall rating on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, in half-star increments, along with a set of more detailed scores in specific categories that feed into that overall number. A 5-star rating is the highest a plan can earn; a 1-star rating is the lowest.
The purpose of the system is straightforward: give people a standardized, apples-to-apples way to compare plan quality, since premiums and benefit charts alone don’t tell you much about how a plan actually performs for the people enrolled in it. CMS builds these ratings from a mix of sources — claims data, plan-reported information, and results from member surveys conducted independently rather than by the insurance companies themselves. That independence matters, because it means the rating isn’t just marketing language from a carrier describing its own plan.
It’s worth understanding upfront that Star Ratings are recalculated every single year. A plan’s rating for the current year reflects performance measured over a prior period, not real-time data, and CMS’s specific list of measures and how it evaluates them can shift somewhat from year to year as the agency refines its methodology. That’s part of why this guide keeps pointing back to checking the current rating directly rather than relying on any static number you might see repeated elsewhere. If you’re just starting to sort through your options as you approach 65, our Medical Insurance at 65 in Connecticut: Complete Guide (2026) is a good place to see how Star Ratings fit into the broader picture of Medicare choices, and our Medicare Initial Enrollment Period at 65 in Connecticut (2026) guide walks through the enrollment timeline itself.
For someone new to Medicare, the headline number — the overall star rating — is often the first thing that catches the eye when comparing plans side by side on Medicare’s tools. That’s a reasonable starting point. But like most single summary numbers, it compresses a lot of underlying detail, and understanding roughly what goes into it makes it far more useful than treating it as a simple pass/fail grade.
It also helps to know that Star Ratings serve a second, quieter purpose beyond consumer comparison: CMS uses them administratively, including in connection with bonus payments to plans that perform well. That’s part of why insurance carriers invest real resources into their Star Ratings performance year over year — it isn’t purely a marketing exercise on their end, either. But the fact that carriers have a financial incentive tied to their ratings is exactly why the independence of the underlying data (claims, standardized surveys, and CMS’s own audits) matters so much. The rating isn’t self-reported the way a five-star customer review on a shopping site might be; it’s built from data sources a plan can’t simply choose favorably.
It’s also worth knowing that not every plan gets a full overall rating. Very new plans that haven’t been operating long enough to generate a complete data set may show as “too new to rate,” and a handful of measures may be temporarily suppressed or adjusted by CMS in certain circumstances, such as when a natural disaster or public health emergency affects a plan’s ability to collect standard data. If you come across a Connecticut plan without an overall rating displayed, this is generally the reason — not a sign that anything is wrong with the plan.
What Actually Goes Into a Plan’s Star Rating
CMS doesn’t arrive at a plan’s Star Rating from one data point. Instead, it pulls together dozens of individual measures across several broad categories and rolls them up into category scores, which then combine into the overall rating. The exact number of measures and how heavily each one factors in can change from year to year as CMS updates its methodology, so this section describes the general categories rather than any specific formula or weighting — for the current methodology, CMS publishes its technical notes directly, and Medicare.gov reflects the resulting scores.
Staying Healthy: Screenings, Tests, and Vaccines
One major category looks at how well a plan supports preventive care — things like whether members are getting recommended screenings (such as breast cancer or colorectal cancer screenings), routine check-ups, and vaccines on schedule. Many Medicare Advantage plans cover a range of preventive services at $0 cost-share to members, and this category is essentially measuring whether people are actually using that access, not just whether it exists on paper. A plan can advertise generous preventive benefits, but if members aren’t actually completing recommended screenings at a healthy rate, that gap shows up here.
This category tends to reward plans that make preventive care genuinely easy to access — for example, through reminder outreach, convenient scheduling, or care coordination that nudges members toward recommended screenings rather than leaving it entirely up to the individual to remember and schedule everything on their own.
Managing Chronic Conditions
A second major category focuses on how well a plan helps members manage ongoing health conditions — things like diabetes, high blood pressure, or other chronic issues that require consistent monitoring and care coordination. This tends to matter a lot for people newly on Medicare who are also managing one or more chronic conditions, since the whole point of this category is measuring whether the plan’s systems (not just the doctor) are helping keep those conditions under control over time.
Measures here often look at things like whether members with diabetes are getting regular monitoring, whether blood pressure is being kept within a healthy range across the plan’s population, and similar clinical markers. Because these outcomes depend heavily on consistent follow-up and coordination between a member’s various doctors, this category can be a reasonable proxy for how well a plan’s care-coordination infrastructure actually functions in practice, rather than just how it’s described in marketing materials.
Member Experience and Satisfaction
CMS also incorporates results from independent member surveys that ask enrollees directly about their experience — things like ease of getting needed care, getting appointments and care quickly, and overall satisfaction with the plan. Because this data comes from a standardized survey process rather than from the plan itself, it’s meant to reflect a genuine cross-section of member sentiment rather than cherry-picked feedback.
These surveys typically go out to a random sample of enrollees rather than to everyone, which is standard practice for this kind of measurement, but it does mean the resulting score is a statistical estimate of overall member sentiment rather than a complete census. It’s still one of the more directly personal-feeling categories in the whole system, since it’s built from what real enrollees said about their actual experience, not from claims data alone.
Member Complaints and Plan Performance
Another component tracks how often members file complaints against the plan, along with measures of whether the plan is improving or declining in performance over time, and whether members are choosing to leave the plan (disenrollment). A plan with a rising complaint rate or a pattern of members leaving tends to see that reflected here.
This category is useful precisely because it captures a different kind of signal than a satisfaction survey does — a formal complaint filed with Medicare tends to reflect a more serious issue than a lukewarm survey answer, and a pattern of members actively choosing to disenroll and switch to a different plan is one of the more telling behavioral signals available, since people generally don’t go through the effort of switching plans unless something isn’t working for them.
Customer Service
Finally, CMS evaluates the plan’s customer service operation itself — things like call center responsiveness and how well the plan handles appeals and grievances when a member disputes a coverage decision. This category is a practical, functional measure of what happens when something goes wrong and a member needs help resolving it.
This matters more than it might seem at first glance. Even a plan with strong clinical outcomes can be frustrating to deal with if getting a coverage question answered, requesting a prior authorization, or appealing a denied claim takes an unreasonable amount of time or effort. This category is designed to reflect that operational, behind-the-scenes reality.
Taken together, these categories are designed to capture both clinical quality and the day-to-day member experience — not just the benefit design or premium a plan advertises. That’s a big part of why Star Ratings can add real value on top of simply comparing benefit charts: they’re attempting to measure how a plan actually performs in practice, for the people already enrolled in it.
Where to Find a Connecticut Plan’s Current Star Rating
The single authoritative source for a specific plan’s current Star Rating is Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder tool. When you enter your Connecticut ZIP code into Plan Finder, it shows you the Medicare Advantage and Part D plans actually available in your service area, along with each plan’s current overall Star Rating and a breakdown of category-level scores you can drill into.
This matters because Star Ratings are recalculated annually, and plan-comparison content you find elsewhere — including brochures, older articles, and even some third-party comparison sites — can easily reference a stale number from a prior year. A rating that was accurate last October may not be accurate this October. The safest habit is to treat any Star Rating you see outside of Medicare.gov as a starting reference point only, and to always confirm the live, current number directly on Plan Finder before making a decision based on it.
Plan Finder also lets you look past the single overall number into the category breakdowns discussed above, which can be genuinely useful if a particular category matters more to you personally — for example, if managing a chronic condition is your top priority, you can look specifically at how a plan scores in that category rather than relying only on the blended overall rating. Once you’ve narrowed down a shortlist of Connecticut plans this way, our Medicare Advantage Plans in 2026: How to Choose the Right CT Plan guide walks through the rest of the comparison process, including benefits, provider networks, and drug formularies alongside the rating itself.
One more practical note: Plan Finder allows you to browse plans without creating an account, but creating a free account and entering your specific medications lets the tool also estimate your drug costs under each plan — which is a separate and equally important piece of the puzzle from the Star Rating itself, covered more in a later section.
Plan Finder also displays whether a plan is new enough that it hasn’t yet accumulated a full rating history, and it will show you the specific category-level scores that roll up into the overall number, not just the headline figure. Spending a few extra minutes clicking into those category breakdowns for your Connecticut shortlist is one of the highest-value things you can do at this stage, because it lets you weight the categories that matter most to your own situation more heavily than the blended overall score does. Someone managing a chronic condition, for example, may reasonably care more about the chronic-condition-management category score than about the overall number alone.
It’s also worth being cautious about any Star Rating figure that shows up in a place other than Medicare.gov itself — a carrier’s own website, a printed brochure mailed to your home, or a general online article (including this one). These sources may be accurate at the moment they’re published, but they aren’t live, and Star Ratings are only recalculated once a year on a schedule set by CMS. Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder is updated to reflect the current year’s official ratings, which is what makes it the one source worth treating as authoritative.
The 5-Star Special Enrollment Period: A Real Feature Worth Knowing
Medicare generally restricts when you can enroll in or switch Medicare Advantage and Part D plans to specific windows during the year — your Initial Enrollment Period around turning 65, the Annual Enrollment Period each fall, and a handful of other special circumstances. Outside those windows, your options to make changes are normally limited.
There’s one notable exception built specifically around Star Ratings: if a 5-star Medicare Advantage plan, Part D plan, or Medicare Cost plan is available in your service area, Medicare generally allows you a one-time Special Enrollment Period to switch into that specific 5-star plan, separate from the standard enrollment windows. This is sometimes referred to informally as the 5-Star Special Enrollment Period.
For Connecticut residents, this can be a genuinely useful feature if a plan in your county earns a 5-star overall rating in a given year — it means you’re not necessarily stuck waiting for the fall Annual Enrollment Period if you want to move into that top-rated option. That said, a few practical points are worth keeping in mind. First, not every county has a 5-star plan available in every year; 5-star ratings at the overall plan level are relatively uncommon, and availability varies by year and by service area, so you’ll need to check Plan Finder for your specific Connecticut county to see what’s actually on offer. Second, this Special Enrollment Period generally can be used only once during the applicable period, so it’s not a repeatable loophole for switching plans multiple times. Third — and this connects directly to the rest of this guide — even a 5-star plan should still be checked against your own doctors, hospitals, and medications before you switch, using the same due diligence you’d apply to any plan change. A top rating describes the plan’s overall performance; it doesn’t automatically mean it’s the single best fit for your particular situation.
It’s also worth understanding why CMS built this feature into the system in the first place. The broader design intent behind Star Ratings is to give plans a meaningful incentive to perform well and to give consumers a meaningful reason to reward that performance — and the 5-star Special Enrollment Period is essentially a direct mechanism for that: it removes the usual timing barrier to acting on a top rating in real time, rather than making someone wait months for the next open window. For someone newly on Medicare who’s still getting oriented, it’s a good example of how the Star Ratings system is meant to function as an active tool, not just a passive comparison chart.
One more nuance worth flagging: this Special Enrollment Period is generally tied to the plan’s rating for the current year, and it typically has its own timing rules separate from the standard enrollment calendar. If you think a 5-star plan might be available in your Connecticut county and you’re considering using this pathway, it’s worth confirming both the plan’s current rating and the specific timing rules directly through Medicare.gov or by speaking with a licensed broker, since enrollment mechanics can have details that are easy to get wrong when navigating them for the first time.
If you’re weighing whether switching into a highly rated plan makes sense compared to sticking with Original Medicare and a Medigap policy, our Medicare Advantage vs Medigap: Which Plan Is Right for You in 2026? guide lays out that broader comparison in more depth.
What Star Ratings Do and Don’t Tell You
This is arguably the most important section of this guide, because it’s where a lot of people new to Medicare get tripped up. Star Ratings are a real, useful, independently-verified quality signal — but they operate at the plan level, aggregated across everyone enrolled in that plan across a wide geographic area. They are not personalized to you, and they were never designed to be.
A high Star Rating tells you that, on average, people enrolled in that plan reported good experiences, got their preventive screenings, had their chronic conditions reasonably well managed, and didn’t file many complaints. What it cannot tell you is whether your specific cardiologist, your specific primary care doctor in New Haven or Hartford, or the specialist you’ve been seeing for years is actually in that plan’s network. It also cannot tell you whether the specific medications you take are on that plan’s drug formulary, and if they are, at what tier or with what restrictions. And it can’t account for the specific mix of health needs you personally have, versus the broader population the rating reflects.
This is exactly the gap our Keep Your CT Doctors at 65: Medicare Network Checklist (2026) guide is built to close — it’s a step-by-step way to verify network fit for the specific Connecticut providers and health systems you already use, whether that’s Yale New Haven Health, Hartford HealthCare, Trinity Health Of New England, Nuvance Health, UConn Health, or an independent practice. A 5-star plan that doesn’t include your longtime doctor isn’t automatically the right choice for you, and a 3.5-star plan that includes every provider and medication you need might be a far better personal fit than the higher-rated alternative.
There’s also a geography wrinkle worth understanding: Star Ratings are generally calculated at the plan contract level, which can span a wide service area — sometimes covering multiple counties or even a broader multi-state region depending on how a given carrier structures its contracts. That means the overall rating you see for a plan reflects experiences aggregated across everyone enrolled under that contract, not just the members living in your specific Connecticut town. Someone in Fairfield County and someone in Litchfield County enrolled in the same overall contract are contributing to the same blended rating, even though their day-to-day network of doctors and hospitals may look quite different. This is one more reason the rating functions best as a general quality signal rather than a hyper-local guarantee.
Similarly, Star Ratings don’t capture the specific extra benefits that may matter to you — things like dental, vision, hearing, or fitness benefits, transportation assistance, or over-the-counter allowances. Two plans with identical overall ratings can have meaningfully different benefit packages, and neither the presence nor the generosity of these extras is what the Star Rating is measuring. If those extra benefits are a priority for you, they need to be compared directly and separately, benefit by benefit, rather than assumed from the star count.
| What Star Ratings DO Tell You | What Star Ratings DON’T Tell You |
|---|---|
| How the plan performs on average across preventive care, chronic condition management, member satisfaction, complaints, and customer service | Whether your specific doctors, specialists, or preferred hospital system are in-network |
| Whether the plan is independently rated well or poorly compared to other plans in its category | Whether your specific prescriptions are on the plan’s drug formulary, and at what cost tier |
| Whether the plan’s rating has been improving, holding steady, or declining year over year | Whether the plan’s specific benefit design (copays, extra benefits) fits your personal budget and health needs |
| Whether members generally reported good access to care and few complaints | Whether the plan is the objectively “best” choice for your individual circumstances |
| Whether a 5-star plan is available in your Connecticut county this year, potentially unlocking a Special Enrollment Period | Anything about Original Medicare plus a separate Medigap policy, since that combination isn’t rated this same way |
Used well, a Star Rating is one input into a shortlist — a quality filter to help you narrow a long list of plans down to a more manageable few worth researching further. Used poorly, it becomes the entire decision, which risks landing you in a highly rated plan that simply doesn’t work for your specific doctors, medications, or health needs.
Ratings Change Every Year — Don’t Rely on Last Year’s Number
Because CMS recalculates Star Ratings annually, a plan’s rating is not a fixed, permanent attribute — it’s a snapshot based on a specific measurement period, and it can move in either direction the following year. A plan that earned 4.5 stars one year isn’t guaranteed to hold that rating the next; it could improve, or it could decline, sometimes for reasons that have more to do with data reporting, changes in the member population, or shifts in CMS’s measurement approach than with any obvious change in how the plan is actually run day to day.
This has a few practical implications worth sitting with. If you’re comparing plans during the Annual Enrollment Period, make sure the rating you’re looking at is the current year’s number on Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder, not something you remember from a prior year or saw referenced in an older article, brochure, or conversation. Ratings referenced anywhere other than the live Plan Finder tool should be treated as potentially outdated the moment they’re written down.
It also means that even if you’re happy with your current plan and have no interest in switching, it’s worth glancing at its current rating each year simply to stay informed — not because a rating dip necessarily means you need to change plans, but because it’s useful context, especially if you’re also noticing changes in your own experience with the plan (harder time getting appointments, coverage questions, and so on). A declining rating alongside a declining personal experience is worth paying attention to; a declining rating with no change in your own experience may simply reflect population-level shifts that don’t affect you directly.
Finally, this year-to-year variability is another reason not to make a permanent mental note like “Plan X is the 5-star plan in my area” and stop checking. What’s true this enrollment season may not be true next season. The habit of rechecking Plan Finder directly, every time you’re evaluating options, is the single most reliable way to make sure you’re working from accurate, current information rather than something that was accurate once and simply stuck in memory.
There are a few underlying reasons ratings shift from year to year, beyond a plan simply getting better or worse at delivering care. CMS periodically adjusts its measurement methodology — adding, retiring, or reweighting specific measures — which means two years can be difficult to compare on a strictly apples-to-apples basis even when a plan’s actual day-to-day operations haven’t changed much. CMS also applies statistical adjustments intended to account for outside factors that can influence outcomes but aren’t fully within a plan’s control. And a plan’s enrolled population can shift over time, which can move survey results and outcome measures independent of anything the plan itself changed. None of this means the ratings aren’t meaningful — it just means a single year’s number is a snapshot shaped by several moving parts, not a permanent verdict.
For someone in Connecticut comparing plans during Annual Enrollment, the practical takeaway is simple: pull the current rating fresh each time, note it, and don’t assume it will still be accurate a year later when you’re evaluating your options again.
How to Use Star Ratings at 65 in Connecticut: A Practical Approach
If you’re newly eligible for Medicare and trying to make sense of the Medicare Advantage plans available in your Connecticut county, Star Ratings are genuinely one of the more useful tools available to you — but they work best as an early filter, not a final answer. Here’s a practical sequence that puts them in proportion.
Start by using Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder with your Connecticut ZIP code to see the full list of Medicare Advantage and Part D plans available where you live. This list can be long, and Star Ratings are a reasonable first pass for narrowing it — you might decide, for instance, to focus your closer research on plans rated 3.5 stars and above, rather than trying to evaluate every single option with equal depth. This step alone can turn an overwhelming list into a manageable shortlist.
From there, take that shortlist and run it through the checks that a rating simply can’t do for you: confirm your specific doctors and preferred hospital system are in-network, confirm your specific medications are on the formulary at a cost tier you’re comfortable with, and compare the actual benefit structure — copays, extra benefits, and any plan-specific rules — against your personal health needs and budget. This is the step most people are tempted to skip because it takes more effort than glancing at a star count, but it’s also the step that determines whether the plan actually works for you day to day.
It’s also worth deciding early on whether Medicare Advantage is the right general path for you in the first place, versus Original Medicare paired with a Medigap policy — Connecticut’s Medigap market has a notable advantage here, since state law requires Medigap to be sold on a continuous, year-round guaranteed-issue basis with no medical underwriting, meaning you generally can’t be turned away or charged more due to health conditions when applying, unlike in many other states. That’s a structural feature of the Connecticut market that’s worth factoring in before you get deep into comparing Medicare Advantage Star Ratings specifically. Our Medicare Advantage vs Medigap: Which Plan Is Right for You in 2026? guide covers that fork in the road in detail, and our Medicare Advantage Plans in 2026: How to Choose the Right CT Plan guide picks up from there if Medicare Advantage looks like the better fit for your situation.
If you’d rather talk through your specific list of doctors, medications, and priorities with a person rather than doing all of this comparison solo, Connecticut’s CHOICES program offers free, unbiased Medicare counseling through the state’s State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) — a genuinely useful, no-cost resource for anyone who wants a second set of eyes on their options.
It can also help to think of this whole process in three distinct passes rather than one big decision made all at once. The first pass is the broad filter: use Star Ratings, service area, and plan type to cut a long list down to a handful of realistic candidates. The second pass is the personal-fit check: doctors, hospitals, medications, and benefit structure, compared plan by plan against your actual situation. The third pass is a sanity check on cost and logistics: understanding what you’d actually pay under each remaining option, how referrals or prior authorizations work if the plan requires them, and what the plan’s customer service and appeals process looks like if something needs to be disputed down the line. Treating it as three passes rather than one overwhelming decision tends to make the whole process feel far more manageable, especially the first time through it at 65.
It’s also worth giving yourself permission to take this in stages rather than rushing to a decision in a single sitting. Reviewing your shortlist, sleeping on it, and coming back to confirm details a day or two later is a perfectly reasonable way to approach a decision that will affect your healthcare access and costs for the year ahead.
Original Medicare and Medigap: No Star Rating System the Same Way
It’s worth being direct about something that trips up a fair number of people newly researching Medicare: Original Medicare (Parts A and B) combined with a Medigap supplement policy is not rated on the same 1-to-5-star CMS system described throughout this guide. That can feel confusing when you’re used to seeing Star Ratings referenced constantly in Medicare Advantage marketing and comparison tools.
The reason comes down to how each option is structured. Medicare Advantage plans are sold as a single bundled package — one plan, from one company, that combines your hospital coverage, medical coverage, and usually drug coverage and extra benefits into one product with its own network and rules. Because it’s one packaged plan, CMS is able to measure that plan as a unit and assign it a single quality score. Part D standalone drug plans work similarly and are rated the same way for the same reason.
Original Medicare, by contrast, isn’t a single packaged product administered by a private insurance company — it’s the federal program itself, with standardized benefits that work the same way regardless of where you live or which doctor you see, as long as that provider accepts Medicare (which the large majority of doctors and hospitals across Connecticut do). A Medigap policy layered on top of Original Medicare is a separate, standardized supplement that pays some of the costs Original Medicare doesn’t cover; it doesn’t manage a network or restrict which doctors you can see. Because there’s no bundled “plan experience” to measure in the way there is with Medicare Advantage, there isn’t an equivalent quality rating attached to the Original Medicare plus Medigap combination.
This isn’t a knock on either path — it’s simply a structural difference in how the two are built and regulated. If part of your decision-making process is leaning on Star Ratings as a quality signal, that’s a factor that applies specifically to Medicare Advantage and Part D, and it’s one more reason the choice between Medicare Advantage and Original Medicare plus Medigap deserves its own separate conversation rather than being decided purely by comparing star counts. Our Medical Insurance at 65 in Connecticut: Complete Guide (2026) walks through both paths side by side if you’re still weighing which direction makes more sense for you.
That said, quality information isn’t entirely absent from the Original Medicare side of things — it’s just structured differently. Medicare separately publishes quality and safety data on individual hospitals and other facilities (through tools like Medicare’s hospital comparison resources), and doctors accepting Medicare are subject to their own set of professional licensing and oversight requirements independent of any plan rating. So while there’s no single bundled “plan score” for Original Medicare plus Medigap the way there is for Medicare Advantage, that doesn’t mean quality information disappears entirely — it’s simply attached to the specific hospital or doctor rather than to a packaged insurance product.
For Connecticut residents specifically, this distinction can actually simplify part of the decision. Because Medigap here must be sold on a continuous, year-round guaranteed-issue basis without medical underwriting, someone choosing Original Medicare plus Medigap in Connecticut doesn’t need to worry about a Star-Rating-style quality comparison between competing Medigap policies covering the identical standardized benefits — the core value proposition of Medigap in Connecticut is less about comparing plan quality and more about comparing carrier pricing and customer service for what is, by design, a standardized set of benefits across companies offering the same lettered plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good Medicare Advantage Star Rating?
Generally, plans rated 4 stars or higher are considered strong performers, though “good” ultimately depends on what matters most to you. A high overall rating reflects solid average performance across preventive care, chronic condition management, member satisfaction, and customer service — but it should still be checked against your own doctors and medications before you treat it as the deciding factor.
Do Star Ratings apply to Medicare Supplement (Medigap) plans in Connecticut?
No, Medigap policies are not rated on the same 1-to-5-star CMS system. That system applies to Medicare Advantage and Part D plans because they’re sold as single bundled products; Medigap works alongside Original Medicare rather than as a packaged plan, so there’s no equivalent bundled quality score.
How often do Medicare Advantage Star Ratings change?
They’re recalculated by CMS annually. A plan’s rating one year is not guaranteed to carry over to the next, so it’s worth checking the current rating on Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder every time you’re comparing or reconsidering plans, rather than relying on a number from a previous year.
Can I switch to a 5-star Medicare Advantage plan any time during the year?
Generally, yes, if a 5-star plan is available in your Connecticut service area — Medicare offers a Special Enrollment Period that allows a one-time switch into a 5-star plan outside the usual enrollment windows. Availability of a 5-star plan varies by county and by year, so check Plan Finder to see what’s actually offered where you live.
Where can I check the current Star Rating for plans available in my Connecticut county?
Medicare.gov’s Plan Finder tool is the authoritative source. Enter your Connecticut ZIP code and it will show every Medicare Advantage and Part D plan available in your area along with its current overall rating and category-level breakdowns.
Does a high Star Rating mean my doctor will be in-network?
Not necessarily. Star Ratings measure overall plan quality and member experience across a broad population — they say nothing about whether any specific doctor, specialist, or hospital system is part of that plan’s network. You still need to verify your own providers directly, ideally before enrolling.
Should I choose a plan based on Star Rating alone?
No. Star Ratings are best used as a starting filter to narrow down a long list of options, not as the sole basis for a final decision. Confirming your specific doctors, medications, and benefit needs against a shortlisted plan matters just as much, if not more.
Do Star Ratings factor in prescription drug costs?
Part D plans and Medicare Advantage plans with drug coverage are evaluated in part on measures related to drug plan performance, though the ratings don’t function as a personalized cost estimate. To see what your specific medications would actually cost under a given plan, use Plan Finder’s drug cost estimator, and keep in mind that Medicare Part D includes an annual out-of-pocket cap of $2,000, after which covered drug costs are fully paid for the rest of the year.
Work With a Licensed Connecticut Medicare Broker
Star Ratings are a genuinely helpful starting point, but turning them into an actual decision — one that accounts for your specific doctors, your specific medications, and your specific budget — is exactly the kind of work an independent, licensed broker can help with at no cost to you. We Find Your Insurance is an independent Connecticut Medicare brokerage led by licensed agent Joseph Antonucci, and because we’re independent rather than tied to a single carrier, we can walk through the actual Star Ratings, networks, and formularies for the Medicare Advantage plans available in your specific Connecticut county — or help you weigh that path against Original Medicare and Connecticut’s guaranteed-issue Medigap market — and help you land on the option that genuinely fits your situation, not just the one with the highest number attached to it. If you’re approaching 65 or reconsidering your current coverage, reach out to We Find Your Insurance for a no-obligation conversation about your options.