Like other certified Medicare counselors, Juliana Lord started out as a “client” of the Medicare Medicaid Assistance Program (MMAP), seeking help when she became eligible for Medicare at 65. A colleague had told her about MMAP, which offers free and unbiased help in understanding, reviewing and enrolling in plans.
That same colleague, a coworker at Kmart headquarters, had also taken training to become a volunteer certified MMAP counselor. Lord had retired and decided she might be good at it. That was in 2012. Today, she counsels between 100 and 150 Medicare beneficiaries each year – more during Open Enrollment.
Medicare Open Enrollment is a yearly window between Oct. 15 and Dec. 7 in which Medicare beneficiaries my change their prescription drug plans without penalty or switch from Original Medicare to a Medicare Advantage (Part C) plan. MMAP counselors are available to talk by phone or Zoom to anyone who would like to review their plan to make sure it still fits their health care needs and budget. For example, a plan may have raised prices of a certain drug that another plan hasn’t.
Many beneficiaries don’t routinely review their plans, but they could be saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars each year.
Last year, says Shari Smith, manager of MMAP at the Area Agency on Aging 1-B, counselors saved beneficiaries over a million dollars by helping them to enroll in lower-cost plans that better suited their needs.
“We always say we don’t sell insurance and we’re not licensed to sell insurance. We don’t get a commission. What we get is satisfaction knowing people are in the plan that makes the best sense for them. That’s our job,” Smith says.
Lord, a 74-year-old Troy resident, gets a lot of satisfaction in helping MMAP clients understand their Medicare plans and, in some cases, to save them money. She counsels beneficiaries during Open Enrollment and over the course of the year, often in face-to-face counseling sessions at the Troy Community Center.
“Some people who come to me year after year, when they change plans I might save them a couple hundred dollars. I saved one person $7,000 by changing to another plan. I keep telling beneficiaries to go to a counselor to review their plan because formularies, premiums and copays change. It’s to their benefit to spend an hour to go through it,” she says.
Because of COVID, MMAP counselors will conduct sessions remotely during Open Enrollment. Appointments are available between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and last up to 1 ½ hours. A link/phone number will be sent when an appointment is made by calling 800-803-7174.
-Content courtesy of the Area Agency on Aging 1-B
For Your Information
If you have Medicare Part D (prescription drug) or a Medicare Advantage (Part C) plan, you get an annual notice in the mail in September, called an Annual Notice of Change (ANOC), that summarizes upcoming changes in your plan. You can find out if the medicine you’re taking is no longer covered by your plan or it increased in price. It could be that the drug fell in price and the plan is adding a benefit.
The ANOC is typically mailed with the plan’s Evidence of Coverage, which provides the details of the changes that will take effect in your plan the following January.
Important information, yes, but these generic-seeming pieces of mail often end up in the trash, along with credit card offers.
“People tend to disregard it because of the flimsy paper,” says Shari Smith, manager of the Medicare Medicaid Assistance Program (MMAP) at the Area Agency on Aging 1-B. “It’s one more piece of information coming out during the Medicare season when everybody is sending you stuff. Most people don’t think it affects them.”
And while plans tend not to change much from year to year, Smith says, you could be stuck for another year with a plan that isn’t working for you.
MMAP offers free, unbiased counseling to help Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage plan holders review their plan during the period of Open Enrollment (Oct. 15 – Dec. 7), the only time during the year that they may switch or enroll in a new plan. Beneficiaries may save thousands of dollars with these routine benefits checkups.
“If you don’t read the ANOC and Evidence of Coverage and something changes, you can really have issues,” Smith says.
MMAP offers year-round counseling throughout the year to all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to help them evaluate and understand their plans. New Medicare beneficiaries should also make an appointment to talk to a certified counselor to learn about their options.
