Saturday, Dec. 7 was the deadline for most people with Medicare coverage to sign up for private drug and medical plans for next year. But members of Congress, health care advocates and insurance agents worry that enrollment decisions based on bad information from the government’s revamped, error-prone Plan Finder website will bring unwelcome surprises. Beneficiaries could be stuck in plans that cost too much and don’t meet their medical needs — with no way out until 2021. On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told Kaiser Health News that beneficiaries would be able to change plans next year because of Plan Finder misinformation, although officials provided few details. The Medicare.gov website had no information about that option. Representatives reached at Medicare’s call center Thursday, who were busy helping with last-minute enrollments, were unaware of it. On Friday, CMS said those representatives will be retrained and the website will be updated after the current enrollment season wraps up. The overhauled Plan Finder debuted at the end of August, and 2020 plan information was added in October. Over the past three months, Plan Finder problems reported to CMS by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the National Association of Health Underwriters, and state and national consumer advocates included inaccurate details about prices, covered drugs and dosages, and difficulty sorting and saving search results, among other things.
Source/more: Kaiser Health News