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In March's Issue:
HAP HAPpenings
CMS News
- CMS's Revised Draft Call Letter for 2010
- CMS Considers Two-Month Delay for Competitive Bidding Regulation
Interesting Items
- The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Medicare Beneficiaries
- New Ways to Think about Volunteers
- Research Finds Medicare Varies Widely Per Beneficiary, By Region
- HHS Secretary Selection Is Announced
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 HAP's Extra Hand
HAP would like to introduce our latest eNewsletter feature—HAP’s Extra Hand, which will highlight topics affecting low-income and vulnerable populations.
You can expect this feature to appear in our eNewsletter as relevant topics arise. This feature will provide:
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Overviews of larger economic and policy issues affecting these populations
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Outreach and enrollment resources for SHIPs
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Useful links to strategies and best practices from partners in the field
This month's stories | |
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Volunteer Match Webinar
Successful Volunteer Interview Strategies
Thursday,
March 12, 2009
2 p.m. EST
Cost: Free
Register
Reminder: National Volunteer Week is April 19-25! Mark your calendars. |
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We welcome your comments and suggestions. Email us at SHIPhelp@hapnetwork.org. | |
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HAP HAPpenings
Welcome Our Newest HAPper
HAP is excited to announce the addition of Michael Holzer to our team. Michael is a Web Tools Program Associate for SHIPTools—HAP's web-based management application designed for SHIPs by SHIPs. Michael will be responsible for helping HAP maintain the highest level of quality and service in SHIPTools functions, including NPR reporting, online training, and volunteer management.
Michael comes to HAP with a background in user documentation creation, systems testing, client management, and a strong interest in health care issues. He is a great addition to the HAP team!
Thank You CSP Applicants
HAP recently invited SHIP programs to complete an application to work collaboratively on volunteer recruitment and management for the 2009 SHIP Grant Year. To all applicants, thank you for taking time to complete the application. We look forward to announcing the names of states selected to participate in the Collaborative State Projects by Wednesday, March 25, 2009. Again, thank you all for completing the application and for your continued interest in working with HAP.
Following Up on HAP’s February Webinar
Thanks to all of you for joining us last month on our very first webinar! We enjoyed talking with you about SHIP certification and appreciate your taking part and trying out the new online “chat” and other webinar features.
During the webinar, several SHIPs offered to share their certification tools and resources. To those of you who requested copies, HAP plans on sharing these materials with you early next week.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback about the webinar. If you have any ideas for what we could do differently or how to make this time together more productive, please send them to SHIPhelp@hapnetwork.org. We want to make our monthly sessions as helpful as possible.
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CMS News
CMS’s Revised Draft Call Letter for 2010
Each year CMS releases a draft Call Letter that explains the new rules for Part D and Medicare Advantage plans for the upcoming year. On January 8, CMS released a draft of the 2010 Call Letter. Shortly after the new administration came into office, CMS pulled the first version and on February 23, released a revised Draft 2010 Call Letter, requesting comments by March 6. HAP, in coordination with directors and staff from state SHIP programs, submitted comments to CMS regarding the Call Letter. Our comments focused on those areas of highest interest and most relevance to the daily work of SHIPs.
The revised draft Call Letter for 2010 includes a number of positive changes. Some examples of these changes include:
- CMS will now require Part D plans to provide access to step-therapy requirements, to adhere to new standards for answering complaints entered into the Complaint Tracking Module, and to eliminate reference-based pricing.
- CMS may also require plans to publish their Medical Loss Ratios—a measure of the amount of money a plan pays out in health care benefits compared to its administrative costs and profit.
These changes, among many others throughout the letter, show that CMS is working towards a better balance between protecting beneficiaries’ needs while retaining plans’ flexibility.
We are pleased that SHIP programs shared their comments with HAP. While submitting comments can be a challenging task, we applaud those of you who took this opportunity to voice your support and concerns about these Medicare programs that affect you, your teams, your clients, and your communities. We eagerly await the final 2010 Call Letter, and we will keep you updated.
CMS Considers Two-Month Delay for Competitive Bidding Regulation
In the February 10 edition of the Federal Register, CMS announced that it is contemplating a 60-day delay in the effective date of an interim federal regulation that was scheduled to take effect on February 17. The interim regulation would have implemented provisions of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) related to Medicare’s competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment and supplies. CMS accepted comments on both the delay and the rule itself.
For more background on MIPPA-related changes, check out HAP’s website.
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Interesting Items
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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and
Medicare Beneficiaries
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides appropriations to assist families affected by unemployment and struggling to provide health care coverage for their families. A specific provision of immediate interest to SHIPs includes an extension of the Qualified Individual (QI) program through Dec. 31, 2010. The QI program provides low-income Medicare beneficiaries (incomes between 120 - 135 percent of federal poverty level) assistance with paying for their Medicare Part B premiums (currently $96.40 per month).
SHIPs may also receive phone calls about the one-time benefit of $250 to Social Security and Supplemental Income (SSI) beneficiaries that the Act provides. For more information and details about this payment, see an explanation of Economic Recovery One-Time Payments from SSA's homepage.
New Ways to Think About Volunteers
With a new generation of volunteers upon us, it's becoming more important for us to change the way we talk— and think—about volunteers. Read a short, but interesting article that demonstrates how we can begin to make this shift. It may also be helpful to keep in mind when recognizing your volunteers during National Volunteer Week celebrated April 19-25!
Research Finds Medicare
Varies Widely Per
Beneficiary, By Region
Medicare’s per capita spending on beneficiaries in the San Francisco area is half of the per capita spending rate in Miami, according to an analysis by Dartmouth’s Center for Health Policy Research published in the February 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers found that Medicare spent about $16,000 per beneficiary in Miami compared with $8,331 in San Francisco in 2006.
The analysis also found that annual growth rates in Medicare spending vary greatly by region. Between 1992 and 2006, Medicare annual spending grew at a 3.5 percent rate nationally. But, in the Dallas area, Medicare spending grew at a 5.3 percent rate annually — more than double Pittsburgh’s rate of 2.3 percent during the same time period.
The report suggests that the higher spending in some communities is tied to how doctors respond to the availability of hospital beds and technology, in the context of Medicare’s fee-for-service payment system that rewards doctors and hospitals for the volume of services they provide. According to the Dartmouth researchers, higher spending does not equate with higher quality. “Indeed, evidence suggests that the quality of care and health care outcomes are better in lower-spending regions,” they wrote. |
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HAP's Extra Hand
LIS Enrollment Campaign:
Promoting Awareness and Education
The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a) recently concluded a 15-month nationwide education and media campaign to reach Medicare beneficiaries eligible for the low-income subsidy (LIS). n4a, along with its CMS and Administration on Aging (AoA) partners, focused on helping eligible Medicare beneficiaries learn about and apply for LIS benefits, as well as choose and join a Medicare Part D plan.
The most successful outreach strategies include putting a heavy emphasis on one-on-one individualized counseling sessions, developing new messages to reach local seniors, and developing “case management” relationships to follow up on referrals. See a full account of the campaign’s tactics and results.
Also, be sure to check out North Carolina’s outreach success with LIS eligible beneficiaries featured on HAP’s Best Practices webpage.
Research Finds Cost Inequities Among Seniors
A newly released report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, Half A Million Older Californians Living Alone Unable to Make Ends Meet, found that in 2007 nearly half a million older adults living alone in California lacked sufficient income to pay for minimum levels of housing, food, health care, transportation, and other basic expenses.
The report found cost inequities among elder renters, Latinos, women, and the elderly, and also suggested that the federal poverty level (FPL) standards many programs use to determine eligibility requirements may not be adequate to support the needs of many of California’s seniors. You can visit HAP’s website for additional resources on Medicaid and low-income benefits.
Do you like this new feature? Email us your feedback at SHIPhelp@hapnetwork.org. | |
HHS Secretary Selection Is Announced
On March 2, President Obama announced his selection for Secretary of Health and Human Services—Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. The Medicare Rights Center (MRC) has submitted a proposal to the designee requesting the Secretary ensure that information given to Medicare beneficiaries is clear and accurate.
Among other things, MRC recommends that CMS “increase funding to SHIPs and initiate funding to other community-based counseling groups to make Medicare education and counseling more relevant and helpful to consumers.” In advance of submitting the proposal, MRC asked a number of organizations, including HAP, for feedback. Click here to read the 9-page proposal in its entirety.
To read a statement by Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA (HAP’s parent organization), about the President’s HHS secretary selection, visit the Families USA Newsroom. |
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