Protect Medicare Beneficiaries from Service, Marketing Abuses (Sen. Olympia Snowe)

With millions of Medicare beneficiaries now relying on a private plan for some form of coverage, and increasing reports of abuses by some such plans, I was proud to partner with Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) this past week to introduce the Medicare Beneficiary Protection Act of 2008.  This legislation takes critical steps to address the serious problems beneficiaries have encountered with both marketing abuses and service by Prescription Drug Plans and Medicare Advantage plans.

Some of these abuses came to light at recent hearing of the Senate Finance Committee in which both Senator Rockefeller and I heard testimony regarding the numerous ways in which our Medicare users can be taken advantage of.  Too many of our nation’s seniors are being entrapped into making bad health care decisions by a complicated system that is easy to manipulate and abuse.  Every year, seniors face increasingly difficult decisions regarding their health care.  Our legislation takes common-sense steps to curb abuses — such as banning telemarketing of these plans, and giving beneficiaries more time to study their plan options.

We must ensure that any beneficiary, who finds out that a plan either was misrepresented or doesn’t meet their needs, will have the opportunity to cancel that coverage.  Medicare is a public trust, and, unfortunately, that public trust has been abused in recent years.  We should not continue to stand by while insurance companies prey on the poor, the elderly and the disabled without consequence.  If the health insurance industry isn’t ready to accept responsibility for its actions, then Congress must step-in to ensure that seniors, not profits, are the top priority.

Our legislation would ban abusive marketing practices — including telemarketing and door-to-door “cold call