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Medicare News
Disenrolling From Medicare Advantage Plans Difficult
for Many Senior Citizens
Medicare Rights Center: no effective, seamless process to do so
July 11, 2007 - The
AP/Lexington
Herald-Leader on Monday examined problems experienced by
Medicare beneficiaries who try to switch their private Medicare
Advantage health insurance plans. "[H]undreds" of elderly residents have
contacted the
Medicare Rights
Center because they cannot disenroll from a private MA plan
purchased "as a result of misleading sales tactics," according to the
AP/Herald-Leader.
Robert Hayes, president of the center, said it can
be difficult to withdraw from MA plans because the federal government
did not establish an effective and seamless process to do so. He said,
"Each office plays by different rules in helping people. Literally,
different people in the same office play by different rules."
Seniors are able to enroll in a different plan
after the end of the open enrollment period if they were misled or given
incorrect information, and they should call the Medicare hot line to
determine eligibility, according to
CMS
spokesperson Jeff Nelligan.
However, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), ranking member
of the
Senate Special
Committee on Aging, said that the hot line is not useful
because callers often experience long wait times and a "dizzying array"
of responses about withdrawing from MA plans. Smith said his staff
called the hot line several times on June 17 and found that the average
wait time was 12 minutes, with others never connecting to an operator.
Nelligan said the average wait time for all calls
made to the hot line on that same date was 32 seconds and calls that did
not go through might have been caused by local telephone network
problems. Smith said his committee is investigating reports of lengthy
backlogs in the disenrollment process (Freking, AP/Lexington
Herald-Leader, 7/9).
Opinion Piece
The "lifeline" for MA plans "is the insurance lobby
and the billions of dollars it has convinced Congress to pump into
industry coffers at the expense of seniors," former Rep. Barbara
Kennelly (D-Conn.), now president and CEO of the
National Committee
to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, writes in a
Hartford Courant
opinion piece. According to Kennelly, if Medicare continues to provide
subsidies for private plans, "the program will face even more pressure
to cut benefits and increase out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries."
It is "time to stop disadvantaging Medicare,"
Kennelly writes. She urges Congress to stop providing "these costly
subsidies to insurance companies and put that money to work for all of
the 43 million Americans enrolled in Medicare, not just the few enrolled
in private plans" (Kennelly, Hartford Courant, 7/10).
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