Tag: National Council on Aging

Website Errors Raise Calls For Medicare To Be Flexible With Seniors’ Enrollment

Seniors will be able to change plans any time next year if they discover their coverage doesn’t provide what the government’s Plan Finder promised. 

By Susan Jaffe  | Kaiser Health News | December 6, 2019 | This article also ran on

Saturday is the deadline for most people with Medicare coverage to sign up for private drug and medical plans for next year. But members of Congress, health care advocates and insurance agents worry that enrollment decisions based on bad information from the government’s revamped, error-prone Plan Finder website will bring unwelcome surprises.

Beneficiaries could be stuck in plans that cost too much and don’t meet their medical needs — with no way out until 2021.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told Kaiser Health News that beneficiaries would be able to change plans next year because of Plan Finder misinformation, although officials provided few details. [Continued at Kaiser Health News or NPR.]   …

Senate Panel Kills Medicare Program That Offers Help On Enrollment, Billing Issues

By Susan Jaffe  | Kaiser Health News | June 17, 2016 | This KHN story also ran on     nprlogo_138x46

A program that has helped seniors understand the many intricacies of Medicare as well as save them millions of dollars would be eliminated by a budget bill overwhelmingly approved last week by the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

The State Health Insurance Assistance Program, or “SHIP,” is among more than a dozen programs left out of the bill by the committee. Cutting these “unnecessary federal programs” helped provide needed funding for other efforts, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the appropriations committee’s health and labor subcommittee, said in a statement last week.

Ending SHIP saves $52 million, which will help pay for a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health, restore year-round Pell Grants, and increase resources to prevent and treat opioid abuse, among other things.

SHIP counselors are in every state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories offering free advice on how to choose from an array of drug and health insurance plans, challenge coverage denials, and receive financial subsidies for premiums, co-payments and deductibles. …Ohio’s SHIP program saved seniors $20.8 million in 2015 and was ranked first in the nation by the Department of Health and Human Services, the state’s lieutenant governor announced in February. [Continued on Kaiser Health News or NPR]

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