Consumer Group Releases Report on States’ Efforts to Increase Enrollment in Benefits for People with Low Incomes

The Medicare Rights Center has released the report, Local Promise: Maximizing Enrollment into Low-Income Medicare Programs through State-Based Consumer Advocacy, which evaluates collaborative advocacy efforts to increase enrollment in Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs) in New York, Maine, Kansas, and Florida. MSPs are programs administered by each state’s Medicaid office that help people with low incomes pay their Medicare costs.

The study highlights the role of consumer advocacy and education in designing and implementing benefits reform. It describes the unique challenges facing each state, the advocacy work and state reforms that have succeeded in overcoming those challenges, and identifies remaining barriers to enrollment as well as opportunities to further increase the number of people enrolled in MSPs. The economic downturn has increased the need for MSPs, even as budget crises have posed new challenges to the states trying to meet this need.

Read the report.