The Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program held a Medicare overview community event last week at the Hollister Community Center to tell seniors about the program’s changes in 2014, especially in light of the recent rollout for the health insurance exchanges as part of the president’s healthcare law.
“The healthcare exchanges are not for Medicare beneficiaries,” said Beth Hyytinen, the program manager for HICAP in San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, at the event. HICAP is part of the nonprofit organization Senior Network Services. The nonprofit was founded in Santa Cruz County to help seniors apply for healthcare services through case management professionals and community volunteers
The group held a meeting last Wednesday with seniors to discuss changes to Medicare, answers to questions about the new healthcare law and prescription drug costs.
Hyytinen told Hollister seniors who attended that it is “illegal” for groups to try to sell those residents insurance on the new exchanges.
She told the seniors that some of the benefits of the law – such as no co-pays for yearly wellness visits and closing the prescription drug “doughnut hole” where some seniors will no longer have to pay out of pocket for some prescription drugs once they reach a certain threshold – will not affect their current Medicare plans.
“As a result of Obamacare, there’s some discounts that equal 56 percent of savings for prescription drugs,” she said.
She said that means seniors saved an average of $300 more than the previous year and she said the doughnut hole disparity would not be closed entirely until 2020.
Evelyn Taylor, a volunteer counselor with the group, said some seniors were getting to the point where they would have to choose between buying groceries or buying prescription drugs. It’s the type of decision she hopes the new law will curtail.
The law also helps to connect different doctors with better technologies to help share information about a patient’s medical history, drugs prescribed and other medical information.
“There are some Medicare beneficiaires that might see 15 different doctors,” she said.
She also spoke about the law’s efforts to crackdown on Medicare fraud – saying it has brought back over $4 billion in fraudulent claims since 2011.
“You just have to be really careful,” she said to the group of more than 40 seniors.
She told them to avoid early-morning or late-night calls from people soliciting credit card, Social Security or Medicare information.
“Medicare will never call you” unless you call them first, she said.
