Redesigned Medicare plan tool steers seniors wrong
The problem is so bad that Nebraska actually shut down its volunteer Medicare advisor network.
So it appears that it’s open season on more than health plan enrollment. Seniors are in the firing line too, after a Trump administration redesign of the online Medicare Cost Finder has been found to provide seniors with the wrong information that provides faulty data not just on plans—but on their costs as well.
ProPublica reports that the $11 million tool, which was supposed to help seniors navigate the complex waters of available Medicare plans, is actually steering them wrong an alarming percentage of the time—with cost estimates that aren’t accurate and error-ridden coverage specifics.
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In fact, the problem is so bad that Nebraska actually shut down its volunteer Medicare advisor network—about 350 strong—because without the tool’s guidance, comparisons of the more than 4,000 plans available across the country “down to three top selections would be nearly impossible,” according to the report.
In addition, it says that prescription drug plan EnvisionRxPlus e-mailed independent insurance brokers nationwide to caution against using the Medicare Plan Finder “because of incorrect estimates on drug prices and patient deductibles.”
With more than 60 million people faced with an annual plan selection choice and a faulty tool, the ramifications are downright scary—particularly since the full effects of incorrect choices won’t be felt till seniors start heading to doctors and pharmacies in 2020 to get treatment or prescriptions and are hit with the fallout from the tool’s shortcomings.
“Millions of people are going to be absolutely affected,” Ann Kayrish, senior program manager for Medicare at the National Council on Aging, told ProPublica. “And you hate to think about millions of people having the wrong plan. That’s kind of crazy.”
“It’s not like there’s one consistent problem that you can fix and then be addressed,” David Lipschutz, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said. “It’s really like a game of whack-a-mole.”
While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid acknowledged that there have been reports of problems, it claimed that there had been “extensive consumer testing … to ensure that the information that is displayed is complete, streamlined, understandable, and is in plain language.” The federal website does not warn of any problems with the redesigned tool, but inaccuracies are cited in the report ranging from inaccuracies in everything from copays to medication quantities to prior authorization requirements.
It’s not that the old tool was error-free and user-friendly, but the redesign does not seem to have helped the situation. Lisa Bari, an independent consultant who previously worked on health IT, interoperability and artificial intelligence at the CMS innovation center, is quoted in the report saying that the kinds of problems materializing from the redesigned tool’s use suggest to her that there hasn’t been sufficient user acceptance testing, resulting in logic, calculation and coding errors.
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