Seniors hate shopping for a Medicare plan (PDF). If you’re eligible for Medicare, maybe you’ve experienced this firsthand. Or maybe you’ve helped a friend or family member shop and seen how frustrating it can be.
Few would probably describe shopping for health insurance as “fun," but research shows Medicare Plan Finder (MPF), the federal government’s website for finding information about plan options, makes this process particularly unbearable.
Howard Bedlin, vice president of public policy and advocacy at the National Council on Aging (NCOA), and Joel White, president of Clear Choices Campaign, elaborated on this problem at AHIP’s National Conference on Medicare on Tuesday. Earlier this year, NCOA and Clear Choices co-authored an analysis of MPF’s functionality (PDF).
MPF is “profoundly and seriously lacking," White said. And it’s not because today’s seniors aren’t computer-savvy: Many have been using the internet for decades, he noted.
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In interviews, seniors railed against the MPF interface for its clutter and lack of clarity, Bedlin said. One even said “the idea of having to do this over again makes my head hurt,” he quoted.
One of MPF’s biggest problems? Information about out-of-pocket costs is difficult to find and understand. On top of that, this information doesn’t account for an individual’s health conditions, physician visits per year, and other factors that impact costs.
CMS unveiled updates to MPF earlier this month, but Bedlin said it still has issues. For instance, he said, consumers can’t search for all supplemental benefits—just dental, hearing and vision.
Joyce Chan, vice president of Medicare at New York City nonprofit insurer Healthfirst, underscored the importance of making MPF usable for all seniors.
Most of Healthfirst’s customers are on the lower end of the socioeconomic status and literacy spectra, so MPF is especially confusing to them. In addition, Healthfirst’s significant dual-eligible population doesn’t have to weigh out-of-pocket medical and drug costs, but they do want clear information about supplemental benefits, she said.
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Bedlin also pointed out that star ratings can be misleading.
“Some [interviewees] assumed it was based on consumer feedback, like Yelp,” he said.
As addressed in a later session, star ratings are not necessarily representative of how well plans serve vulnerable populations.
Plans that serve many dual-eligible beneficiaries tend to get poorer ratings than plans that serve high socioeconomic populations, said Nancy DeLew, associate deputy assistant secretary with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). They are also less likely to meet the four-star federal bonus threshold.
ASPE has found that incorporating socioeconomic factors into risk-adjustment models would better reflect plans’ ability to serve patients, she said.