§ 423.863 Submission and approval of bids.

(a) Submission of bids—(1) Solicitation of bids. Separate from the risk bidding process under § 423.265, CMS solicits bids from eligible fallback entities for the offering in all fallback service areas in one or more PDP regions of a fallback prescription drug plan during the contract period specified in § 423.871(b).

(2) Timing of bids. CMS determines when to solicit bids for 2006 so that potential fallback prescription drug plans have enough time to prepare a bid. After that, bids are solicited on 3 year cycles, or annually thereafter as needed to replace contractors between contracting cycles.