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Is Joe Namath’s Medicare Career Over? CMS Reminds of Plan Sponsors Responsibility for Downline Marketing Practices
TAMPA, FLORIDA, USA, October 12, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ — One of our good friends, Robert Bache, shared with us the guidance reminder from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid regarding the advertising practices of Plan Sponsors and their Downline Entities. The document clearly wanted to get across the message that it had increased interest in policing and penalizing Medicare Advantage companies and their agents for misleading marketing and sales practices. Medicare Advantage has been a sore subject area for many years in the marketing and distribution practice due to the average Medicare beneficiaries’ understanding of the difference between Traditional Medicare and a Medigap Plan G versus Medicare Advantage. Medicare beneficiaries see the advertisements coming out and with additional benefits and premium giveback claims and believe these are just enhancements to the way their Medicare already works. Unfortunately they often do not realize that they have put their Traditional Medicare in a dormant status until it is too late.
Medicare Advantage is certainly useful and a good option for certain people when they understand it. It is not Medicare Advantage that needs to take all of the blame. Often times the appropriate coverage with Traditional Medicare is unaffordable and the Medicare Advantage plans do provide a maximum out of pocket. The providers’ billing departments often tell beneficiaries to cancel their Medicare Advantage plan and return to Traditional Medicare without knowing the ins and outs of Medicare alone or the repercussions of doing so.
Medigap plans being underwritten means that they cannot be purchased anytime, and though there is a one year trial right associated with tested Part C Medicare Advantage, often times beneficiaries are outside of that one year test period when their health takes a wrong turn.
Medicare is a complex healthcare system that many struggle to understand. Using a local broker familiar with the market where you are is recommended. You can find local brokers through certain only directories or just google Medicare and the name of your town to search for Google’s recommendation. It is then recommended you pick someone with significant quality reviews.
It isn’t perfectly clear what the intent of this letter was, but there is a tremendous amount of uproar in the agent community that commercials with celebrities like Joe Namath, Jimmy Walker and more continue to be allowed. These celebrity endorsements of plans they do not even have is something that skirts regulation and confuses many senior citizens.
Justin Brock said “We hope that the Plan Sponsors will take note and make clear their expectations to these large call centers that routinely change people to plans they do not understand, and we also hope this extends to large recruiting organizations leaning in on transactional marketing practices that decrease the Medicare aged populations’ faith in Medicare and the systems that support it.”
Steven Martinez
Bobby Brock Insurance
+1 662-844-3300
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