Snagging seniors during open enrollment

Beware Medicare Advantage Marketing

A 2022 Commonwealth Fund survey indicates that three quarters of individuals aged 65 and older reported receiving daily unsolicited calls or ads: “Hello, this is your senior advisor.” Calls are supposed to be federally prohibited unless individuals agree to be called.

Regardless, it’s open season on annoying – and often deceptive – phone calls, TV advertising and mailings. Most of the paid marketing barrage promotes Medicare plans run by private insurers, called Medicare Advantage (Part C) and Part D, the prescription drug coverage.

Medicare Advantage is more than twice as profitable for private insurers than any other type of health insurance coverage, according to the KFF, a nonprofit health policy and polling source (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation). Advising a senior citizen to remain with a traditional Medicare plan doesn’t generate much profit for an insurance broker unless they can sell a private supplemental insurance plan as well.

But isn’t this just good ole American free enterprise at work? The nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund’s research suggests it might be more accurately pegged as a predatory practice.

Low-income people bear the brunt of the high-pressure marketing and advertising. Many report being asked for Medicare or Social Security numbers. Twelve million Americans who may be eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid have even more confusing choices from the category of special Medicare Advantage plans known as Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch