An important health care story about Medicare Advantage is being missed because the news media are caught up in yet another of their feeding frenzies (Walter Reed). Via Schwitzer health news blog, a journalist makes the following observation:
In many areas, plans have contracted with independent brokers/agents to make a last push to persuade beneficiaries to switch plans … There’s a lot of misinformation being spread … By the time we get around to reporting on it … the misinformation campaigns will have been successful.
Medicare Advantage is, of course, a replacement product to which patients can switch from traditional Medicare. The problem is that these plans are being sold to seniors in a very deceptive fashion.For example, almost all of the MA patients presenting at my hospital believe they have been sold a supplemental plan similar to AARP. In other words, the patients are not being told that they are giving up their traditional Medicare.Moreover, none of them seem to have been told that, if they don’t go back to traditional Medicare before March 31, they are stuck with their MA plan until the end of the year. This is a huge disservice to the Medicare population and to the providers, who are often not notified of the switch to MA until they receive a denied claim form traditional Medicare. A few words about all of this in the news media would constitute a real public service.
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