National Medicare Education Week Seminar Will Answer Questions About Medicare
National Medicare Education Week Seminar Will Answer Questions About Medicare
BY KATHERINE NEWMAN
One of the three National Medicare Education Week (NMEW) Seminars happening in Chicago will be held at the Illinois Eye Institute, 3241 S. Michigan Ave., Sept. 21 at 1 p.m. as part of NMEW. The free educational seminar, hosted by UnitedHealthcare, is meant to help aging Chicagoans better understand their coverage options going into the annual enrollment period that begins in October.
“We started National Medicare Education Week because we started to realize that there were a significant number of beneficiaries that really didn’t completely understand how Medicare worked. We did a big survey and we’ve done some follow up surveys and we found that around 40 percent of Medicare beneficiaries really just don’t feel comfortable with how it works, what it is, and what their options are,” said Rick Dunlop, Health Plan CEO of UnitedHealthcare Medicare and Retirement in Illinois.
Topics of discussion at the Seminar will include the basics of Medicare, when and how to enroll and change plans, and how delaying retirement may impact a person’s coverage.
There will be a local Medicare expert leading the 90-minute seminar which will also include a time for questions and answers.
“I’ve done this presentation a couple of times and the way we structure it is it’s a pretty casual 45-minute presentation about the ABC’s of Medicare and what seems to come back most of the time is questions along the lines of ‘what do I do’,” said Dunlop.
National Medicare Education Week runs from Sept. 15-21 throughout the country and recently the Mayor of Chicago released a Proclamation regarding the same week as Chicago Medicare Education Week and urged all Chicagoans to recognize the importance of Medicare.
Across the country, there are a total of 62 million Medicare beneficiaries and a 2017 survey conducted by UnitedHealthcare found 2 in 5 Medicare beneficiaries have a “fair” or “poor” understanding of Medicare. The results of this particular survey, and others like it, made it clear that there was a need for better education around Medicare.
“The best place for us to serve the community starts with educating and so NMEW was set up for that purpose.
Our goal in it really is to have people walk away and realize it’s not that difficult and to give them some things to think about as they’re heading into the annual open enrollment period,” said Dunlop.
There are approximately 840,000 Medicare beneficiaries in the Greater Chicago Area, according to Dunlop, and UnitedHealthcare strategically scheduled three NMEW Seminars across the city to make sure that everyone could access the information they needed.
“We’re kind of bouncing these around into different locations to just try and make sure that we’re serving as many communities and constituents as we can,” said Dunlop. We’re trying to make sure that we get the word out and allow everybody to get completely educated and comfortable with how Medicare works as we get into that open enrollment period next month.”
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