Stacy Sanders – Susan Jaffe

By Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | September 22, 2017 | This KHN story also ran on

[UPDATE: Since this article was published, Medicare officials extended the deadline for applying for an exemption to the Part B late enrollment penalty to Sept. 30, 2018. The announcement came in a fact sheet posted on Oct. 12, 2017.]

Many older Americans who have Affordable Care Act insurance policies are going to miss a Sept. 30 deadline to enroll in Medicare, and they need more time to make the change, advocates say.

A lifetime of late enrollment penalties typically await people who don’t sign up for Medicare Part B — which covers doctor visits and other outpatient services — when they first become eligible. That includes people who mistakenly thought that because they had insurance through the ACA marketplaces, they didn’t need to enroll in Medicare.

Medicare officials are offering to waive those penalties under a temporary rule change that began earlier this year, but the deal ends Sept. 30.

On Wednesday, more than 40 groups, including consumer health advocacy organizations and insurers, asked Medicare chief Seema Verma to extend the waiver deadline through at least Dec. 31, because they are worried that many people who could be helped still don’t know about it. [Continued at Kaiser Health News and NPR]…

By Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | June 6, 2017 | This KHN story also ran on

Each year, thousands of Americans miss their deadline to enroll in Medicare, and federal officials and consumer advocates worry that many of them mistakenly think they don’t need to sign up because they have purchased insurance on the health law’s marketplaces. That decision can leave them facing a lifetime of enrollment penalties.

Now Medicare has temporarily changed its rules to offer a reprieve from penalties for people who kept Affordable Care Act policies after becoming eligible for Medicare.

“Many of these individuals did not receive the information necessary [when they became eligible for Medicare or when they initially enrolled] in coverage through the marketplace to make an informed decision regarding” Medicare enrollment, said a Medicare spokesman, explaining the policy change.

Those who qualify include people 65 and older who have a marketplace plan or had one they lost or canceled, as well as people who have qualified for Medicare due to a disability but chose to use marketplace plans. They have until Sept. 30 to request a waiver of the usual penalty Medicare assesses when people delay signing up for Medicare’s Part B, which covers visits to the doctor and other outpatient care…

“This has been a problem from the beginning of the Affordable Care Act, because the government didn’t understand that people would not know when they needed to sign up for Medicare,” said Bonnie Burns, a consultant for California Health Advocates, a consumer group. “Once they had insurance, that relieved all the stress of not having coverage and then when they became eligible for Medicare, nobody told them to make that change.”[Continued at Kaiser Health News and NPR]…