Fred Riccardi (Credit: House Energy and Commerce)
Congress should help keep older workers from making painful Medicare Part B enrollment mistakes, a Medicare enrollee advocate said today at a hearing on Capitol Hill.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is the federal agency in charge of helping people sign up for Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare health benefits.
Fred Riccardi told lawmakers that, today, SSA enrolls many people who retire at age 65 in traditional Medicare Part A hospitalization coverage and Medicare B outpatient and physician services coverage automatically, when those people start claiming Social Security benefits.
But the trend toward workers working past age 65, and putting off the time when they collect Social Security benefits, has broken that system and saddled hundreds of thousands of retirees with extra-high Medicare premium bills, Riccardi said.
Resources
- Links to hearing resources, including a video recording of the hearing, are available here.
- The H.R. 2477 Congress.gov tracking page is available here.
- An article by a compliance specialist on issues facing active employees who have reached the Medicare eligibility age is available here.
Today, Riccardi said, even most workers who do work past age 65 end up getting Medicare Part A coverage automatically.
"Enrollment in Part B is much more complicated," Riccardi said.
People who work past age 65 and stay in their employers' health plans may have no idea whether they're supposed to sign up for Medicare Part B coverage, and even employers' benefits people may not be clear on what the rules are, Riccardi said.
"Mistakes are indeed very high," Riccardi said.
Consumers who put off signing up for Medicare Part B coverage are supposed to pay a 10% penalty for each year of delay.
