The annual enrollment period for Medicare Advantage plans and stand-alone Medicare drug plans began today.
Advisors are wondering whether the enrollment period — which is set to run through Dec. 7 — will be as terrifying as some have feared or, like the enrollment period for 2025, stressful and frustrating in a mostly tolerable way.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees the issuers of the private plans that help consumers fill in the many coverage gaps left by "original Medicare," tried to ease issuer stress by increasing subsidy levels, but worries about benefits rules and high enrollee claim levels have caused issuers to pull out of many counties or make the plans they are offering less generous.
Issuers have also tried to cope with last-minute worries by zeroing out brokers' sales commissions or pulling plans off of digital sales systems, to sharply reduce sales of plans that Medicare plan market rules force them to keep on the market shelves.
The Better Medicare Alliance found that the total number of Medicare Advantage plans — with each plan from an issuer in a different county counting as a separate plan — will fall only a little in 2025: to 5,030, from 5,084.
About 59% of the plans will rely entirely on federal subsidy money and will not charge the enrollees a monthly premium, the alliance said.
But more of the issuers are pinching benefits by increasing the annual maximum out-of-pocket costs to the legal limit, and the average annual out-of-pocket maximum is rising to $5,900, from $5,400.
Jessica Brooks-Wood, the chief executive officer of the National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals, has joined with Health Agents for America, the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors to ask CMS to stabilize Medicare plan issuers' support for agents and consumers.
"Immediate action is needed to protect seniors from losing the coverage and guidance they depend on," Brooks-Woods said in a comment on what NABIP is seeing. "Across the country, we are seeing plan exits, reduced options in rural areas, and rising premiums. These trends are leaving seniors confused, anxious, and at risk."
SeniorLiving.org, a publication that helps long-term care services providers market to consumers, recently published data on consumers' feelings about the situation in a summary of results of a survey of 931 U.S. residents ages 65 and older.
For a look at some of what they found, see the gallery accompanying this article.
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.