Medicare Cuts Hurt Seniors
You can tell the Congress to protect seniors from these harmful Medicare cuts at go.care2.com.
“The proposed cuts will slash spending for hospitals, skills nursing facilities, and ambulance services,” said Michael Lawley of Care2 and ThePetitionSite team. “Additionally, while planning cuts in Medicare the White House snuck $700 billion for privatization of Social Security in his budget.”
Lawley said we must once again stop “this reckless agenda the White House is putting forward” and must tell Congress to put our seniors ahead of big industry donors.
“Having failed to convince Congress to overhaul Social Security last year, President Bush in his budget for fiscal year 2007 is taking am on Medicare,” he stated.
According to seniorjournal.com confusion continues to reign in the Medicare Prescription Drug Program as failures by government administrators have some seniors enrolled in two plans and in other cases insurers paying benefits to seniors not covered by their plan.
Some Medicare beneficiaries who have switched drug plans are actively enrolled in two plans, creating confusion for insurers and pharmacists and placing beneficiaries at risk of being charged two premiums or incorrect co-payments.
In a recent memo to insurers, the Bush administration said that government “processing systems have not always sent the enrollment and disenrollment information to the appropriate plans” when beneficiaries switch plans.
As a result, “many of the beneficiaries who switched plans are active on enrollment files at multiple plans,” the memo said.
When a beneficiary switches drug plans Medicare is supposed to send a disenrollment notice to the original plan and a confirmation of enrollment notice to the new plan, according to one newspaper.
The problem affects “tens of thousands” of beneficiaries and might explain why many people who qualify for a low-income subsidy under the drug benefit mistakenly were billed for premiums or charged high co-pays, the paper said.
According to the article “when a beneficiary switches plans, Medicare typically provides information on the person’s low-income status ton only one of the two plans” while the other plan might “still be providing coverage without realizing the person is entitled to a low-income subsidy.”
In addition, some drug plans have stopped processing disenrollments because they have been unable to verify the accuracy of notices they received from the government.
