StarRecount

Pulls the 11 numbers CMS just stopped folding into your Medicare star rating and shows you the comparison you'd have seen a year ago.

Problem

CMS finalized a rule on April 2, 2026 that strips 11 measures out of the formula behind 2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D Star Ratings, including complaints about the plan, members choosing to leave, appeal timeliness, customer service, and Medicare Plan Finder price accuracy. Plans still have to report those numbers. CMS just stopped using them to compute the star you see on Medicare.gov. Open Enrollment opened October 15, 2026. Anyone comparing plans this week is reading a rating that's quietly easier to earn than last year's, with no obvious place to find what got dropped.

Target user

A Medicare beneficiary around 65 to 80, or the adult child doing the research for them, who starts on Medicare.gov's Plan Finder because it's the default and has no reason to know a chunk of the input data moved out of the formula. The job: find out whether a plan's old 4.5 stars would still be 4.5 stars under last year's math, using numbers CMS still collects but no longer summarizes for them.

MVP scope

• Zip and county lookup against CMS's public Part C and D plan data (Landscape files, Star Ratings data, Complaints Tracking Module records, and disenrollment-reason public-use files) for the local service area.
• Per-plan table showing the official 2027 star rating next to the plan's own 2026 numbers on the 11 measures that stopped counting: complaint rate per 1,000 members, voluntary disenrollment rate, appeal timeliness, customer-service call metrics, Plan Finder price accuracy.
• A "Recount Score," labeled clearly as independent and not a CMS product, that reapplies last year's weighting to this year's raw numbers so a user can see whether a rating moved because the plan improved or because the formula changed.
• A paste-in claim checker: drop in text from a mailer or an agent call, like "top-rated" or "best in your area," and flag it as a superlative that no longer has to be documented, since that requirement was dropped October 1, 2026.
• A standing note on every plan page pointing to the free SHIP counseling line, since agents are no longer required to mention it in the first minute of a call.
• One-page PDF export of the comparison to bring to a SHIP counselor or send to family before the December 7, 2026 deadline.

Monetization

Freemium. Free tier covers the zip lookup and the official-versus-raw-numbers table for up to three plans. $14 one-time per enrollment season unlocks unlimited plans, the Recount Score, and the PDF export. That's priced under an hour of a paid advisor, and timed to the 53-day window where it actually gets used.

Why now

The three dates line up inside one month: CMS finalized the measure cuts April 2, 2026, the marketing rules loosened October 1, 2026, and Open Enrollment opened October 15, 2026. A tool that re-surfaces the dropped measures only matters during the window when people are actually picking a 2027 plan. Build it now, or the trend is stale by December 7.

Risks & open questions

• SHIP counselors are free and already do this by phone. The pitch only holds if people won't wait for an appointment or want to walk in prepared, which is worth testing before building past the comparison table.
• CMS's complaint and disenrollment public-use files run on a lag, often a quarter or two behind, and get thin at the plan level in smaller counties. Check the actual file cadence before promising anything close to real time.
• Matching a user's own doctors and prescriptions to a plan's formulary and network is a much bigger data problem than the 11-measure recount, and scoping it into the MVP would blow a weekend build. Leave it out and say so on the page.
• A wrong Recount Score during a locked enrollment window is real harm, not a bad review. Every screen needs an "independent estimate, not advice" line, not just a footer.
• "Star Ratings" is CMS's own term. Language this close to it needs a clear, visible disclaimer that this is an independent recalculation.

Next step

Pull the actual CMS Complaints Tracking Module and disenrollment files for one state, recompute the Recount Score for ten real plans, and see whether the recounted ranking changes enough against the official 2027 rating to be worth a user's time.

Sources

• https://www.aarp.org/medicare/new-medicare-marketing-broker-rules/ — marketing rules loosened October 1, 2026: disclaimer timing, superlative language ("best," "highest-rated"), SHIP mention dropped from the required opening script
• https://www.themadisonpartners.com/medicare-star-ratings-just-got-less-useful-heres-what-to-use-instead/ — CMS finalized the rule April 2, 2026 stripping 11 measures from Star Ratings; confirms the dropped measures are still reported through CMS's plan-comparison tools
• https://www.iheart.com/content/2026-10-15-medicare-open-enrollment-begins-2027-plan-changes-announced/ — Open Enrollment opened October 15, 2026, runs through December 7, 2026
• https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/04/06/2026-06600/medicare-program-contract-year-2027-and-certain-contract-year-2026-policy-and-technical-changes-to — official CMS final rule on CY2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D changes