Nov. 25, 2011 - Black Friday is nearly upon us, and along with holiday gift shopping, there’s plenty of Medicare shopping
to do over Thanksgiving weekend. Seniors have only two weeks left to choose a new Medicare Advantage or prescription drug plan, if they want
to change from their current ones. Medicare’s open enrollment deadline was pushed up this year, from Dec. 31 to Dec. 7, as part of the 2010
federal health law.
The earlier deadline is meant to ensure that beneficiaries
are properly enrolled and get their new membership cards by the start of the plan
year Jan. 1.
Despite earlier concerns, advocates with AARP and the Medicare Rights Center said that awareness of the looming deadline
seems to have picked up over the past month because of the many TV ads, mailers and events calling attention to it. Few callers to the groups’
helplines are asking about the deadline; talk is now almost entirely about picking a plan.
Tony Salters, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said enrollment is “on track,” though he
was unable to provide specific numbers. Call volume to 1-800-MEDICARE has grown consistently throughout November, Salters added, and reminder
mailings were recently sent out to complement the more than 200 events that CMS has hosted.
However, many Medicare beneficiaries might still be unaware, according to a phone survey by GfK Roper for
UnitedHealthcare, one of the largest plan providers. Among 500 seniors surveyed around the midpoint of the Medicare enrollment period in early
November, only 32 percent correctly identified the Dec. 7 deadline, while 15 percent thought it was still Dec. 31.
Some Medicare beneficiaries have been known to wait until the last minute. Families
are being encouraged to talk about Medicare over the long Thanksgiving weekend,
rather than the Christmas holidays as in previous years.
Before you turn on the TV and watch football, sit down and discuss the “four Cs” - cost, coverage, convenience and
customer service - said Nicole Duritz, an AARP vice president. People often forget about customer service, in particular. It’s important to
evaluate the responsiveness of your Medicare provider, Duritz said, as well as to consider other providers and their ratings.
Medicare’s
official website features a plan comparison tool, which includes the star ratings
that CMS awards based on quality factors such as rates of hospital readmission.
Younger, computer-literate relatives can be especially helpful with the site during the Thanksgiving holiday: “It
wouldn’t be a bad idea to cluster around a computer for an hour that day,” said MRC President Joe Baker.
One response below to “That Other Shopping Spree: Medicare Deadline Looms”
By Dennis Byron
This is a good idea but a little confusing. In what way is a Medicare Part C or Part D insurer rated on hospital
readmissions?
The best bet is to look at Part D Drug Plans in your county based on the “annual retail cost estimate” ranking provided
by medicare.gov after you plug in your drugs and your preferred drug store.
For many seniors however, they don’t like deductibles so they pick a higher annual cost plan to avoid having to pay the
first $200-$300 worth of prescriptions for the year out of pocket. That’s OK too as long as they understand their options.
As for using medicare.gov’s rankings to understand Part C Medicare Advantage plan options, the compuerized Medicare plan
finder is less useful because it does not do as good a job estimating total health and drug costs as it does estimating just drug costs.
The big thing to watch is the Part C plan’s network: Is your doctor in it? Is your closest hopital in it? And the worst
case is that both doctor and hospital accept the plan but are not in the insurer’s “inner circle” (in the latter case, the provider accepts
the insurance card but bills the senior for an extremely large co-pay)? Check any Plan C network in both directions.
