This past fall, the Medicare Rights Center’s national consumer helpline staff and volunteers were hard at work assisting people with their Medicare coverage options. Fall Open Enrollment is the time of year when people with Medicare can change their coverage, and it is Medicare Rights’ busiest season. During this time—which takes place from October 15 through December 7 every year—Medicare Rights answered more than 3,000 questions for older adults and people with disabilities. Helpline counselors and staff assisted clients with reviewing their current coverage, comparing their Medicare Part D plan and Medicare Advantage plan options, and discussing the benefits of Original Medicare versus Medicare Advantage.

The Medicare Rights Center is hard at work in our nation’s capital advocating for policies that protect and strengthen Medicare for older adults and people with disabilities.
We are currently working to prevent lawmakers from using the increased federal deficit that resulted from the Tax Cut bill as an excuse to cut or restructure Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. While Congress approved legislation preventing automatic cuts, there is still a gaping revenue shortfall of $1.5 trillion or more, putting these programs directly in the cross-hairs of policy-makers seeking to pay for the tax cuts.

The Medicare Rights Center recently spoke with former staff member Mary-Ann Etiebet, M.D., who is currently the executive director at Merck for Mothers, about her time at Medicare Rights and what made her become a generous donor to the organization. Mary-Ann has more than two decades of experience improving health care outcomes for vulnerable populations, and her work began when she was hired at Medicare Rights as a health advocacy fellow in 1996, and she continued on as an education associate the following year. She remembers how Medicare Rights grew during her time there, with only five full-time staff members when she started and about a dozen when she left, as well as an increased operating budget.

The Medicare Rights Center is very happy to have been awarded, in partnership with the Center for Medicare Advocacy (the Center), a one-year grant from The Retirement Research Foundation to protect access to quality health coverage for people with Medicare.

In the past year alone, Medicare Rights answered 20,000 questions on our free, multilingual helpline, secured $6 million in Medicare benefits for our clients with low-incomes, and educated hundreds of thousands of people about Medicare at presentations nationwide.

The Medicare Rights Center’s Coalition to Protect the Rights of New York’s Dually Eligible (CPRNYDE) works to ensure that the needs of people with both Medicare and Medicaid are at the center of policymaking efforts and their voices are heard. One way we do this is through our Workgroup for People with Medicare and Medicaid.

The Medicare Rights’ federal policy team’s work varies day to day, but their overall strategy leads to one goal: to protect and strengthen Medicare for the 56 million individuals who depend on the program today—and the many millions more who are counting on it for the years to come.

With an estimated 10,000 people aging into Medicare every day— and more than 56 million currently enrolled in the program—the need for clear, accurate, and accessible Medicare information grows unabated. The Medicare Rights Center works diligently to address this need nationally through its counseling, education, and advocacy programs, and especially serves the communities surrounding its home base in New York City with dozens of Medicare presentations each year.