SALISBURY TWP., Pa. – Wednesday was the first day of the open enrollment period for older Americans who use Medicare Advantage plans, but this year, there may be more people than ever shopping around.<\/p>\n
At Hitcho Insurance in Salisbury Township, CEO Michael Hitcho said they’re making a lot of phone calls.<\/p>\n
“We have about 800 clients that are affected that are losing insurance coverage. So we’ve been reaching out to them,” said Hitcho.<\/p>\n
Unlike with traditional Medicare through the Federal government, Medicare Advantage is through private companies, and those companies can end plans that aren’t profitable.<\/p>\n
“A lot of regional carriers are in a bit of financial trouble, so the best way to control this, if they’re not making money from a product, is to do away with it,” said Hitcho.<\/p>\n
And Hitcho said they did away with a lot of health insurance plans for seniors.<\/p>\n
“In our viewing area, it’s a definite major impact. Somewhere around 20 to 30 thousand Medicare enrollees that their plans are affected to the point that they’re going to need to make a new selection for next year,” said Hitcho.<\/p>\n
Hitcho said it’s the first time he’s seen it this bad in his career.<\/p>\n
“This is pretty unusual. Being in business for 25 years in this industry, I’ve only seen something somewhat similar once before, but not to this extent,” said Hitcho.<\/p>\n
So what’s causing companies to cancel so many plans? Hitcho said it’s multiple factors.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of high utilization of services. The Inflation Reduction Act brought in 2022 to reduce the drug prices really pushed a lot of those prices to the insurance carriers. Some of the extra benefits are just costing a lot of money. The fact that 7.5 million people might lose their Medicaid insurance, and if the insurance carrier that you’re getting has a book of Medicaid, they might be losing money there,” said Hitcho.<\/p>\n
Open enrollment for Medicare Advantage plans will continue from Wednesday until December 7th, so you’ve still got plenty of time if you’re shopping for a new plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALISBURY TWP., Pa. – Wednesday was the first day of the open enrollment period for older Americans who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,338,2354,2353,2351,2352,2355],"class_list":["post-2638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-healthcare","tag-hitcho-insurance-company","tag-insurance-plans","tag-medicare-advantage","tag-open-enrollment","tag-seniors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}