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PROTECTING SENIORS FROM SHADY SALES OF PRIVATE MEDICARE BENEFIT PLANS
Medicare beneficiaries can get their Medicare benefits from traditional fee-for-service Medicare, or from private plans known as Medicare Advantage (MA). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services set lax standards for marketing of those plans to seniors, but have proposed a rule to protect seniors better. Meanwhile, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 pre-empted the role state insurance regulators traditionally play in protecting Medicare beneficiaries from unfair marketing practices, saying that the Federal benefit should be overseen entirely at the Federal level. Numerous reports have surfaced about aggressive, abusive or fraudulent sales and marketing practices employed by private MA plans. H.R. 6331, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, would build on the CMS-proposed rule to ban abusive marketing of Medicare Advantage and other plans once and for all, and provide additional protections as follows: Read more…