Nonprofit health plans top quality-of-care rankings for seventh straight year

For the seventh straight year, most top-quality health plans are nonprofit, according to the latest rankings by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

The rankings are rekindling calls for federal regulators to require that plans sold on the healthcare reform law's state-based insurance exchanges make transparent to consumers whether they're for-profit or nonprofit. The Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care spearheaded that request in recent comments to the Department of Health and Human Services.

According to the alliance's analysis of the new rankings, 100 percent of the Top 10 private, Medicare and Medicaid plans were nonprofit. In addition, nonprofit plans made up 68 percent of the top 25th percentile among the 390 private plans ranked; 54 percent of the top 25th percentile among the 341 Medicare plans ranked; and 76 percent of the top 25th percentile among the 99 Medicaid plans ranked.