Description: Risk adjustment (RA) is a key component for CMS Medicare Advantage program and California Medicaid Managed Care program. While both RA programs follow generally accepted basic principles at a high level, their underlying methodologies and assumptions are also quite different. Due to recent events such as COVID-19 Public Health Emergency and Medicaid redetermination delay and restart, it adds complexity to Risk Adjustment. This is a hot topic in the industry and has significant impact to health plans. Keeping current with risk adjustment program changes and understanding the commonalities and differences of these two government risk adjustment programs is important to our health actuaries. Compare these two risk adjustment programs so you can learn key elements of a risk adjustment program, similarities and differences in methodology and assumptions , as well as special considerations due to serving different populations.