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Perhaps the most affected (and the most worried) people when it comes to how the healthcare reform law will roll in the next few years are the senior citizens. How does the healthcare reform law affect them? As most senior citizens rely on fixed incomes to survive, an increase in their healthcare costs could mean budget problems.
In the reform law, senior citizens may lose some of the provisions that they enjoy with Medicare today. On the other hand, they will be able to take advantage of the enhancements that will spring from the reform, such as the prescription drug program.
The government will enforce payment cuts to the Medicare Advantage which is an alternative to the traditional Medicare. These are plans run by private insurers and a total of $132 billion will be taken out from their budget as mandated by the law in the next ten years.
At present, Medicare Advantage offers benefits to senior citizens that they don’t usually get in the traditional Medicare, but these could be stopped if they feel the budget cuts. The law does not state any cuts to be made on the traditional Medicare budget but payments to home health care will be reduced by $40 billion and hospital payments reduced by $22 billion in the next few years.
The bright side is that an existing problem in Medicare will be addressed. If you are a senior citizen, you know that when you reach $2,700 cap on drugs a year, your coverage stops until you spend $6154 on the same drugs and then your coverage starts again. A provision in the law now gives $250 to those affected by the limited amount of $2,700 and in the coming years, the government will gradually increase its payment to drug costs until such a time when 75% of the amount between the set limits will be paid for by the government.
A post on HealthCare.gov by Jonathan Blum, the Deputy Administrator and Director for the Center of Medicare at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shares the efforts that the administration is putting towards making the Medicare program and health care coverage in general easier for seniors.
Blum shares how seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries have expressed that going through the 4,000 choices available for prescription drug plans can be daunting, especially since there are plans that offer comparable benefits. In order to address this concern, efforts are being made to eliminate duplicative plans in order to make it easier for seniors to choose a plan that is suitable for their needs.
Blum also said that “making Medicare Part D easier to use” will be one of their top priorities, citing a Commonwealth Fund report that determined that most seniors found Part D “too complicated,” an observation that may have prevented some seniors from finding the best plan for their needs.
The phase out of duplicative plans will result in the reduction of prescription drug plan choices by more than 700 plans. Despite the reduction, there will still be 3,240 Part D drug plans for beneficiaries to choose from.
Blum assures seniors that the change is seamless and will not require any action on the part of the beneficiaries; there will be no gap for seniors in terms of coverage. Should seniors feel the need to change their plans, however, they can choose to do so.
Should seniors have any questions regarding Medicare and Medicaid services, Blum encourages them to call 1-800-MEDICARE.
One of the major beneficiaries of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are senior citizens. However, according to a feature on Health Leaders Media, seniors are not as informed as they ought to be regarding the provisions of health care reform, and what the new law means to them.
This conclusion was drawn from a survey that was released by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) on Monday. The said survey was conducted by Harris International, and the results of the survey indicated that none of the 636 senior citizens who were interviewed could answer correctly all 12 questions regarding health care reform that were chosen by the NCOA.
During a briefing held in Washington, David Krane, vice president of public affairs and policy research for Harris Interactive, shared additional statistics based on the survey. He added that only 17 percent of senior adults who were interviewed could correctly answer more than half of the questions, while only 9 percent could correctly answer at least two-thirds of the questions.
Based on the over-all results of the survey, Krane suggested “more education about the subject [of Medicare and healthcare reform], which is obviously very complicated.”
In order to address the concerns that rose out of the survey, the NCOA announced the launch of a campaign, “Straight Talk for Seniors on Health Reform.” The announcement was made by James Firman, president and CEO of NCOA, who said: “Seniors need to know the key facts about health reform so that they can be informed consumers and educated citizens.” The campaign will include, among others, townhall events and educational materials.
