Medicare and the Health Insurance Marketplace

So much more attention is being given the Affordable Care Act as we get ever closer to the 2014 implementation.  There is some confusion (maybe for all of us) about the correlation, if any, of Medicare and the Health Insurance Marketplace. CMS has issued a fact sheet for frequently asked questions (FAQ) for Medicare beneficiaries. People with Medicare and the Health Insurance Marketplace covers three common (and important) questions for Medicare beneficiaries: what to do if contacted to sign up for a marketplace health plan (be careful about fraud; it’s illegal to knowingly sell to a Medicare beneficiary); what to do about marketplace plans during the Medicare open enrollment (nothing); and whether one’s Medicare coverage would be affected by the health insurance marketplace (no).

Susan Jaffe of Kaiser Health Network (KHN) wrote a story on this on August 25, 2013.  No Shopping Zone: Medicare is Not Part of the New Insurance Marketplaces. The story notes two outreach efforts-one to get the uninsured to sign up and the other to inform Medicare beneficiaries to not (enroll or telephone).  The story quotes Michele Patrick, Medicare’s Deputy Director of Communications: “[w]e want to reassure Medicare beneficiaries that they are already covered, their benefits are not changing and the marketplace doesn’t require them to do anything…”  The 2014 Medicare and You handbook (forthcoming) will reinforce this with a message to beneficiaries about  who the marketplace is for, and who it is not—i.e., Medicare beneficiaries.

Becky Morgan