Healthcare Technology Featured Article

September 17, 2012

More Low Income Seniors Helped by Medicare Savings Program


We’ve all heard the very sad stories about seniors who have to choose between eating and buying prescriptions or obtaining healthcare. But for some time, low-income Medicare beneficiaries who couldn’t afford their premiums were helped by enrollment in the Medicare Savings Program, and after the Social Security Administration (SSA) went through an awareness campaign, the program has significantly expanded, according to a GAO report.Enrollment in the Medicare Savings Program went up each year since 2007, the report found, but the highest increases occurred in 2010 and 2011, following an outreach effort from the Social Security Administration (SSA), a story at Modern Healthcare reported.

Many beneficiaries don’t participate in savings programs because they must complete a cumbersome application process, including a burdensome asset test. Officials in 28 states reported growth in their Medicare Savings Programs as a result of SSA transfers, the GAO found. The SSA was required as part of the Patients and Providers Act of 2008 to transfer information on beneficiaries who file a low-income subsidy application to a state Medicaid agency.Beth Kutscher noted that the SSA “spent $11.7 million in fiscal years 2009 to 2011 on building awareness and staff training.” Even better, the agency stayed well under its $27.1 million budget for that time period.Enrollment increased 5.2 percent in 2010 and 5.1 percent in 2011, according to the GAO, attributing the growth to the SSA's efforts as well as the economic downturn, according to Kutscher.

Remarkably, fewer than one-third of eligible Medicare beneficiaries enroll in Medicare savings programs, which pay premiums and, in some cases, eliminate out-of-pocket cost sharing for poor and near-poor enrollees.

Medicare has been very much in the news as the presidential campaign roars towards its close, thanks to the choice of Paul Ryan by Mitt Romney as his running mate. The "Ryan plan," much of which Republicans integrated into their party's platform at the convention, “would replace Medicare's wide-ranging coverage of health services for the elderly with a voucher program for seniors to buy their own care,” according to David Morgan.




Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli
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