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Good afternoon everyone. This is Dr. Astril Webb, I am the Project Director for North
American Management’s Public Housing Primary Care Program. And I want to welcome all of
you to today’s webinar, thank you for joining in. We have a really exciting topic today,
“Checking Up on Elder Economic Security.” And we’re really excited to have this presentation,
because we know that 1 in 3 older adults are, is considered to be economically insecure.
And they’re struggling to pay, not only their food bills, prescriptions, their healthcare
costs, but any other, all other necessities. So fortunately, we are learning that there
are a number of key benefits and services that are available, especially for seniors
who live in public housing to help them become more financially stable.
So today’s webinar, will allow us the opportunity to recognize what some of these benefits are
and highlight some of the resources and tools that may be available to connect your seniors
in public housing to the assistance that they need. And some of these, as our presenter
will go through, include BenefitsCheckUp, Savvy Savings Seniors financial education
tools, and some State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs).
During the webinar, you’re going to learn some of these key benefit programs, and learn
about some of the resources. As HRSA funded grantees, we think it’s important for you
to be prepared and to learn what these are so that you can better aid your patients.
Our presenter for today’s webinar is Brandy Bauer, and Brandy Bauer is the Communications
Manager for economic security for the National Council on Aging. There she’s responsible
for gathering promising practices from the field and managing publications and online
communications and relations related to benefits access, as well as elder economic security.
She has over a decade of experience in communications related to improving access to services for
vulnerable and populations including health, humanitarian aid and human rights’ sector.
So without further ado, I would like to turn this over to our presenter, Ms. Brandy Bauer.
Thank you so much for presenting today’s topic. We know that our grantees are going
to learn, extremely, great and valued information for their seniors in public housing. Ms. Bauer…
Thank you Astril and Kevin. It’s a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. As Astril said,
I’m from the National Council on Aging. And for those of you that may not be as familiar
with NCOA, we’re a national, nonprofit service and advocacy organization. We’re head-quartered
in Washington, DC, but we work with community organizations and state agencies all over
the country. And we really help them to help seniors find jobs, find benefits, improve
their health, and live independently and remain active in their communities.
So as Astril sort of went over a little bit earlier, we’re going to be talking a little
about just the background of the intersection between health and economic security before
I talk about some of the key benefits that are available to older adults on a fixed income.
I know that some of you have very different backgrounds, so I’m trying to start with
some basic foundational knowledge about elder economic security and benefits. So Excuse
me if I repeat some things that you may already be familiar with. My hope is that everyone
will find something useful from this call today. And then we will, sort of go into a
little detail on some of the key resources for this population and what you can do to
get involved, and to help some of the clients that you see on a day to day basis, to connect
with these services. So starting off, you know, we at NCOA, talk
a lot about, who, disadvantaged older adults, but last year we actually sat down and we
thought about what, what is a disadvantaged older adult? And to us we define older adults
as those sixty years and older, which is approximately 56 million Americans, as of the most recent
census. And roughly half of these have incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level (FPL),
we define that as sort of the threshold of economic security. And 250% of the poverty
level, you may recall that in 2012 the poverty level for a single person is $11,170. The
250% is, is around $27,000. Now that may sound like a decent amount of money depending on
where you live in this country. But we still consider that potentially economically insecure
because when people don’t have assets to fall back on, they tend to be one event away
from, sort of, losing it all and going into debt. Whether that is through a health crisis
or through a foreclosure or some sort of other catastrophic incident.
What we know about this population is that roughly 18.8 million of these older adults
have at least one chronic condition. And of those, 14.5 million have more than 2 chronic
conditions. You know, in 2009, NCOA did a survey about older adults with limited income
and chronic conditions. One of the things we found, that about 38% of those with chronic
conditions, did not have the money to actually do things that would improve their health.
So we’re talking not just about, you know, people who have these conditions, but really
lacking the resources to be able to sort of improve their health and to remain living
in their community. You know it, here, this chart on this slide
really kind of breaks it down more. We also know from some of our research that those
who fall in that 250% of federal poverty threshold, often tend to have multiple chronic conditions
that appear earlier in their life. About 59% of people in the 60-64 year old age cohort
already experience at least one chronic condition. And the severity of those chronic conditions
only increases as they age. If you look at this chart, you’ll see that those conditions
that are most frequent in this population, are also those that can have really have significant
financial implications, in terms of a person needing on-going prescriptions to manage them
or needing durable medical equipment, or even sometimes costly procedures, like surgeries
for arthritis or heart disease, and which is yet another reason why people with chronic
conditions are economically vulnerable. You know, benefits are really a critical resource
in the spectrum of financial assistance that are available to older adults, especially
those who are aging and out of the workforce. Many seniors aren’t going to be seeing a
change in their income; they’re going to get whatever they’re going to get from social
security or you know, collect from whatever savings they have. And So when those sources
of income, like savings are exhausted or limited, they’re going to have to find other means
that are available to pay for their basic necessities. And this is what benefits programs
do. Now this is probably no surprise to you, you
know, what do low-income seniors need help paying for and what benefits can help? Well
NCOA has identified a couple of core programs that can help pay for these areas of healthcare,
prescriptions, food, utilities and basic necessities that are available to this population. And
together these core benefits really represent a huge financial and quality of life, sort
of gain, for these vulnerable older adults, and also younger adults with disabilities.
So the programs that I’m going to be talking about are often available to anybody who has
Medicare, and so that not only includes everyone over the age of 65 but it also includes many
adults between the ages of 18 and 64, who because of a disability are unable to work
or have significant limitations on work, and are therefore able to draw from Medicare.
Now this is not to say, when I list these programs here, Medicaid/Medicare savings programs,
SNAP, these aren’t the only benefits available for this population. We sort of identify this
as the core set because they can help meet these needs, but there are many, many more
benefits. And I’m going to talk a little bit about that as we go along.
But first I want to go into some of these programs in a little bit more detail, so that
you understand them better. The first one I want to talk about is the Part D Low-Income
Subsidy, which is sometimes called LIS/Extra Help. This is a program that’s administered
by the Social Security Administration and Medicare. And it’s the one benefit that
seniors, who are eligible, are most likely to have. And I’ll explain that in a little
bit more detail as we go along. This is a program for people who have incomes below
150% of the poverty level, and it helps them to pay for their, Part D, their drug plan
costs, which includes like their premiums, and also like copayments and deductibles,
if they, if they qualify. And also eliminates this so called donut hole that coverage gap
that some people fall into when they have significant prescription costs. For LIS, people
should have Part D, but they don’t have to automatically be enrolled in a plan. If
they are qualified to receive this program, they will be automatically put into a drug
plan when they get in it if they’re not in one already. And unlike Medicare itself,
where there’s this discrete enrollment period, this is an opportunity, this program for people
who qualify, they can apply at anytime. And they can change their drug plans at any time
so they really have a significant window of time in order to sort of gain from this. And
what they get out of it is, obviously they get their premium for Part D, which for most
people is about $99/year, and if they also pay very, very significant, significantly
low copayments on their drugs, ranging from $1-$6 at maximum; so a significant benefit
for those who qualify, for under 150% of the poverty level.
Another key program that we talk about a lot is the Medicare Savings Program. Now these
are financed by Medicaid, and I emphasize that because even though it has the word Medicare
in the title, because it’s financed by Medicaid, states have an influence over how it’s administered
and the different eligibility requirements. So there’s a sort of federal eligibility
threshold for these programs but states can actually be more generous by either lifting
those eligibility levels or eliminating any, what we call asset tests, which is a measurement
of how much, how many resources the senior has. This program, these programs help pay
for the Medicare premiums and also those with the…Sorry, they help them pay for Medicare
premiums and also some cost-sharing for Medicare. And I think I misspoke earlier, the Medicare
Part B premium is $99/month, the Medicare Part D premium, for LIS, is actually lower,
it’s roughly like $35/month depending on your plan. The Medicare Savings Programs you
may hear them in, along different acronyms, there the QMB, which is the Qualified Medicare
Beneficiary program, and that’s for people with incomes below the poverty level. And
that pays the most significant spectrum of benefits for premiums, deductibles and copayments.
There’s SLMB, which is the Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary program. And that only
covers the Part B premium; it generally for people who have incomes between 100-120% of
the FPL. And then finally there’s the QI program, the Qualifying Individual program.
Again it only covers the Part B premium, and it’s for people with slightly higher incomes,
usually between 120 and 135% of the FPL. Now if a person qualifies and gets enrolled
into one of these Medicare Savings programs, they are automatically enrolled into LIS,
so they automatically get that drug benefit, which is why so many people are, who qualify
for LIS get it automatically. Now another way people can get LIS is if they
have Medicaid. And I’m sure for most of you who are working in sort of health centers,
you know a lot about Medicaid, I probably don’t have to go into what Medicaid does.
But important to remember is that about 9 million people across the US have both Medicare
and Medicaid. These people are sometimes called “duals” or dual-eligibles. And the important
thing to remember about these dual-eligibles is that depending on the state that they live
in, Medicaid can cover certain services that Medicare does not. So for example, Medicare
does not necessarily, does not cover hearing aids, it does not cover vision or eye glasses,
it does not cover dental care, but depending on the state that you live in, if your Medicaid
program covers those things, that would provide a kind of wrap around service for people on
Medicare. Medicaid, for people who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare, will also
pay for some of those copayments and deductibles that the Medicare beneficiary incurs. And
again, anybody who is enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare will automatically get enrolled
into that LIS prescription drug, low-income subsidy.
So moving along to food assistance, I want to talk a little bit about SNAP, which is
commonly known by its old name, Food Stamps, and some states have different names for the
program, but it is called SNAP at the federal level. At the national level it’s administered
by the Food & Nutrition services by the Department of Agriculture, but like Medicaid and Medicare
savings programs, it’s actually administered on a local level, and therefore the eligibility
requirements are, states are allowed to choose, to vary them because like Medicaid, there’s
a certain threshold at the federal level that they have to meet. But they can be more generous
if they want to, and many times people are, states are more generous for this program.
As a general rule, people over the age of 60 who have net income less than 100% of this
poverty level, will qualify for SNAP, but again this is the very minimum threshold.
And many, many states have much, much higher, I mean some of them even have up to 300% of
the FPL. The surprising thing about SNAP though is that only about 35% of seniors who qualify
actually receive it. It’s a seriously underutilized and undersubscribed program by older adults
for a couple of reasons. I think there’s a sort of stigma that’s carried on through
the last few decades. There’s also this misperception that seniors will only get a
minimum benefit of either $10 or $16/month, which is not true. The average benefit for
a senior nationally is about $119/month, so that’s quite a bit of money. And SNAP in
some states still has a rather complex application procedure. In other states, there are simplified
applications, especially for seniors. But in some areas there are still rather lengthy
publications, or applications, however, some states are also bundling applications. So
you might apply for Medicaid and SNAP and like another program at the same time.
And I think probably most of you may be familiar with SNAPs and how it gets administered to
a person, they get an Electronic Benefits Transfer card, they can use it at any participating
grocery store, on any sort of, pretty much any food product as long as its not prepared
foods. And the benefits, the calculations of the benefits are based on the household
composition. The more people in the house, the more the higher the potential benefit
will be. LIHEP is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance
Program. And this is given in the form of a block grant, states and territories from
the Administration for Children and Families (HHS). The grants are basically awarded either
directly to a senior or to their energy company. And it’s, and even though you may be working
with seniors who live in public housing, people in public housing are still potentially eligible
to reap the benefits of LIHEAP. So you’ll, you’ll had to have to check with your states
guidelines to see what the qualifications are, but that’s not necessarily something
that excludes people in public housing. The monies can be used for, you know, tuning up,
and repairing and replacing heating units or for actually paying the energy bills. But
because it’s a block grant, it’s, each state sort of spends the money soon as it
kind of comes in, and that means usually that there’s an open call for applications often
in winter, often in fall or winter. And once those funds are gone, they’re gone. So we
always encourage seniors, if they need help paying for their utility bills that it’s
really best to apply very early in the season, especially because LIHEAP is one of the programs
on the federal level that has been significantly cut back in the last few years. And generally,
to qualify households must have incomes below 150% of the FPL, though some states often
do raise that limit if the median income is higher.
Social, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), this is administered by Social Security, and
it is for persons with extremely low or no income, so people who may not have worked
their entire life. Perhaps like widows of somebody who worked, who aren’t able to
draw down much in Social Security. It’s also some sort of like legal immigrants, can
draw down Supplemental Security Income, if they don’t have a work history and can’t
collect Social Security. The income limits do vary by area so it’s really good to contact
your local Social Security office for more information. The average payment is roughly
$500/month, so it’s not a significant amount of money but it is meant to sort of, to give
people kind of a baseline amount of money to help pay their basic necessities. And as
with Medicaid and Medicare savings programs, if somebody qualifies for SSI they automatically
get enrolled into that Medicare prescription drug low-income subsidy, that LIS program
that I mentioned earlier. Now the, as I said before, these are just
the core benefits programs we talk about at NCOA, there are other noteworthy programs
out there, and especially for people who are just above that kind of threshold of poverty
that we’ve talked about for some of these programs. Some of those, some programs are
available for people who have more low to modest income, but maybe don’t fall kind
of right near that poverty level. And some of the noteworthy ones among these are State
Prescription Assistance Programs (SPAPs), 24 states currently have these SPAPs, as they’re
called. And they really provide wrap around coverage for prescription drugs; they’re
for people who have Medicare but don’t qualify for some of these other programs that could
help them pay for their prescriptions. Some drug manufacturers, like Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca,
have rebate programs as well. So that depending on if you’re taking their brand name drug,
you can qualify to get either a significant rebate or even drugs at no cost depending
on your income. There are lots of other food assistance programs out there for seniors.
The most prominent of which is this Senior Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program, which
is kind of like SNAP. It gives the people money to spend at their local farmer’s market
or farm stand in order to get fresh produce. Again, it’s available in some areas, but
not in others. It’s very area-dependent but it’s certainly worth looking into.
There’s also Emergency Food Assistance Programs, for people who truly do not have sort of any
money, any money or any food to sort of last throughout the week. There’s lots of other
programs out there, there’s free and reduced cell phone service. There’s a couple different
companies that offer cell phones to older adults, and a certain amount of minutes that
come free with that cell phone if they qualify. There are a lot of tax rebates and relief
programs, especially for older homeowners that are worth looking into. At lot of these
are actually for people how have even up to sort of middle income, so you don’t have
to be absolutely poor to qualify for those. Now to kind of come back to what we were talking
about before; why are these important? Well if you look at this chart here, we’ve really
kind of broken down what the average annual value of some of these core benefits programs
is. You can see for like Extra Help, that’s the drug subsidy, that’s four, roughly $4000.
For some of the healthcare programs, it’s a little over a thousand dollars. Food assistance
is the same; SSI obviously because that’s for people with no income that offers the
most value. But if somebody were to qualify for all of these, this has a potential value
of $12,000, which you know, for somebody who is earning…[voice is blocked out]…income
right there. So clearly significant benefits, both financially, and to sort of help with
the well-being of the person. Now as you, you all work with people who live
subsidized housing, in public housing, you might be quite interested in the statistics
on this slide. We have a tool called BenefitsCheckUp here at NCOA, which I’m going to talk about
in just a few minutes. Through this tool we’re able to collect some interesting demographic
data about the users. And we looked at people over age 62, living in public housing to,
sort of, understand kind of what their needs are. And I think the most interesting statistic
on this slide is the one at the very end, which is the fact that when we looked at this
population we found out that 91% of these people are already enrolled in one benefit
but potentially eligible for another. So we can’t necessarily trust that somebody who
is receiving one benefit is going to know about another program or is going to get automatically
enrolled in another program simply because they’re on food stamps for example. So having
awareness and education about kind of the spectrum of benefits, and how to connect people
to them will really help to reduce these numbers of people who are missing out.
So that brings me to, some of the key economic security resources, which you’re probably
thinking, how do I connect people to this now that you’ve told me about these programs;
what do we do next? Well, starting with NCOA, is the, NCOA houses the National Center for
Benefits, Outreach and Enrollment. And this is supported by the Administration on Aging.
It provides a lot of technical assistance as well as just individual support to people
who want to connect seniors to benefits. I give you our website address there, that’s
centerforbenefits.org. And really encourage you to explore our, the site; we have a lot
more detailed information about these programs that I’ve talked about today, as well as
a resource library and library of promising practices about these programs. And we also
have a series of recorded webinars which is a Benefits 101 series. If you want to learn
specific information about any of these programs I’ve talked about we have that available
to you. NCOA also administers a tool called BenefitsCheckUp.
Now this is a tool that has been in use for over a decade. It’s a web-based screening
tool. It contains about 2000 public and private benefits programs. And the tool is aimed at
adults aged 55 and older. So most of the benefits are for that older demographic, but we encourage
anyone, anyone in the family of this older adult can help them to do a screening as long
as they have enough information about the person’s income and expenses. I’m going
to just walk you through a sort of sample of what BenefitsCheckUp screening would look
like and what you enter. It’s available at benefitscheckup.org, everything is completely
free and confidential, so you don’t have to worry about it taking any of your personal
information or mailing or selling you anything. So when you go on to BenefitsCheckUp, you
can see on the front page that you have the opportunity to do a comprehensive screening
or a very specific screening, looking just at food assistance or prescription assistance.
Now the screenings will ask the user for the zip code and that’s to help to identify
very local sources of information and even benefits at the local level that the person
might be eligible to receive. For example, some communities have public transportation
programs or sort of free meals at senior centers, or anything where we know that there is something
very local that will be offered up if the person is you know, determined to be likely
eligible to receive that. Then the person is asked a series of questions about their
household situation, do they live alone, do they rent or own their home, what’s their
average SSI or other income, and how much do they pay on prescriptions and utilities
every month, as well as what specific prescriptions they have, because as I mentioned before some
of these drugs manufacturers have rebate programs. And so if somebody’s actually taking a specific
drug where there’s a rebate program associated with that manufacturer that would come up
as well. Now, even if somebody chooses to do one of
these short screenings for example, we have a mechanism in benefits check up that’s
called shadow screening. And shadow screening basically says, you know, even if you go in
and you do a very shortened version of this tool, the system looks at other programs and
says ‘you know, I know you were just looking for food, but you are also potentially eligible
to receive some of these other services’, like help with your prescriptions or help
with transportation. And we do that to really provide, just that, what we call a person-centered
approach, which is just, we know that if you have problems paying for food, you probably
also have problems paying for some of your other healthcare and other expenses.
So when a person does the information, and depending on which screening you do, it takes
about 10 minutes for the short screening, it can take up to 30 minutes for the longer
screening to just fill out the information on income and assets, and that sort of thing.
Then you will see a screen like this come up at the very end of the results list. Now
it’ll tell of all the programs that the person is likely eligible to apply for. And
if there are applications where they can apply immediately online, you’ll see a button
on that screen where they can actually do it from the site. As I said, it’s completely
confidential, we have for example, an agreement through Social Security so that if they want
to apply for the Extra Help, Low-Income Subsidy, it goes through to the Social Security site,
it’s completely secure, you know, they’re not leaving their information on our screening
site. And likewise, if somebody were to check on
one of these programs, they’d get a plain language factsheet explaining what the program
is, with links on the side to local offices, if there’s a local office where they can
go in person and apply, it’ll have that address, it’ll have website links, it’ll
also have applications in different languages. Some states have very diverse populations
and may have an application form in ten languages, and if we have that available, that’s also
available to download from the website once screening is completed.
So in addition to BenefitsCheckUp, I also want to point out another tool for people
who may not be as comfortable using the web, because we recognize that there are a lot
of older adults out there who just aren’t web savvy, or may, it just may not feel comfortable.
And that’s the Eldercare Locator, this is a program administered by the National Association
of Areas on Aging, which is called N4A. And they have a toll free phone number which you
see on the screen there (1-800-677-1116), that allows people to call in and to basically,
to state their needs, to say, you know, “I’m looking for food assistance”. And the Eldercare
Locator staff will make what’s called a warm transfer to a community agency, which
means they will get somebody from a community agency on the phone, sort of introduce that
person to the caller and sort of let them connect that way. Earlier this, last month,
NCOA and N4A launched a campaign for consumers, called You Gave, Now Save. And we really wanted
to promote these two tools, BenefitsCheckUp and the Eldercare Locator to consumers and
caregivers to really try and better access these benefits and these supportive services.
And as part of this campaign we developed a guide to benefits for seniors, as well as
a data brief. The data brief is more intended for advocates and the media, but the guide
for seniors is definitely for consumers. And if you go to NCOA.org, you can find that
guide to benefits. You can download it, it provides a lot of information about some of
the programs I’ve talked about today, as well as some additional programs, transportation
and housing, and so we really encourage you to just sort of circulate that amongst the
people that you, you sort of encounter. Now another resource that is sort of available
in some communities, not all, are Benefits Enrollment Centers. And these were funded
by NCOA to provide a sort of one-stop shopping for people with Medicare to access all of
the benefits that I’ve talked about today. This slide is actually incorrect, we’ve
since, since I made this slide we’ve funded 2 more BECs, so we now have a total of 22
BECs in 19 states, which you can see on the map there; we’ve added another one in Illinois
and in Georgia. And these are state or community agencies that do comprehensive screenings
and application assistance. They also do a lot of follow-up with clients to make sure
that they get the benefits; that they’re not just applying, they’re actually checking
to make sure that they get them, that they know how to use them, that they know how to
re-certify for those benefits. Some of the BECs operate state-wide, some of them operate
in specific kind of geographic areas or counties, but if you go on to NCOA.org, you can find
information about the BECs and whether there is one in your area.
Some other resources that NCOA supports: we also support these economic service centers.
And these are twenty community organizations that are looking not just at benefits but
really a holistic approach to economic support for low-income seniors. So in addition to
helping people do benefits applications, they’re also dealing with things like foreclosures,
helping people get out of credit card debt, getting temporary employment, all of those
sort of activities that can make a huge difference in the life of somebody who is struggling
financially. Again, if you go onto NCOA.org, you can find the location of those sites,
and sort of how to connect with them if they’re available in your community.
Another activity that NCOA is one of the sponsors of nationally is the Senior Community Service
Employment Program (SCSEP). This is a program for seniors who are over the age of 55, who
have incomes of no more than 125% of the poverty level. And it’s really intended to retrain
older adults, and to place them in a community with a wide variety of positions at nonprofit,
public facilities, such as daycare centers, hospitals, libraries, government agencies,
senior centers, to really sort of get them back on their feet and earning an income before
its time for them to sort of officially retire and receive Social Security.
And sort of, going along with some of these activities we’ve developed a suite of financial
education tools called the Savvy Saving Seniors guide, it’s really tools in a box, we have
a professional’s toolkit as well as a consumer’s tool guide. One of them focuses on benefits
and kind of areas where people can save money by getting certain supportive services. Our
most recent one is focused on scams, top scams that affect older adults and how to avoid
them, and if you do sort of find yourself a victim of a scam what to do about it. And
again these are available free on NCOA’s website; anyone can sort of download them.
I want to point out a few other resources that are not NCOA based but are extremely
important for this audience. If you haven’t already connected with your state health insurance
assistance program, I encourage you to look them up. These are federally funded to provide
objective counseling to people with Medicare about health insurance and related benefits.
And the SHIPS have also received money to do this benefits outreach and enrollment,
to help people to enroll in those benefits that help make Medicare affordable. And so
they’re available in every state, there’s a toll-free number, there are local offices,
and there are counselors that can meet people, even in public housing facilities and health
centers. And they are very happy to work with this population; very knowledgeable about
all facets of Medicare and health insurance for the older adult population. You can find
out more information on your specific State Health Insurance Assistance program at Medicare.gov.
Just to let you know, in, they’re called SHIPS in some states and in other states they
have completely different acronyms; they’re called HI-CAP in California, they’re called
CLAIM in Missouri, so you may not know the acronym SHIP, but that doesn’t mean they
don’t exist in your state, they might be known by something else.
So finally I want to sort of just touch on a few little areas where you all can get involved
and you can connect with the people you see everyday. We certainly encourage you to use
our resources, to build your own knowledge about some of the benefits. As I said before,
we have webinar series, we have training modules, not only on our website but we even have a
channel of a lot of our webinars which cover a wide range of topics, everything from healthcare
reform, and how that affects people with Medicare, to sort of this Benefits 101, to how to message
some of these programs for older adults, we really encourage you to check out those resources.
As I said, our Savvy Savings Seniors guide, our guides to benefits for seniors, all of
those are completely free, you’re welcome to download them and circulate them as much
as you want. We have no problem with that, you don’t have to ask our permission and
we really encourage people to use those and to give them to people that you encounter.
We also really, strongly encourage you to forge partnerships with your local SHIPS office,
with your local BEC, if there is one in your community. And with some of these other local
agencies, because there is tremendous opportunity, many of these agencies have funding to do
outreach events for older adults, and they’re just sort of looking for community partners.
And they would be happy to get sort of referrals from you, to invite you to be at an event
if you want to or vice versa, to come to an event if you’re hosting an event, health
fairs, that sort of thing. They’re just an excellent source of information. And also,
you know, if you encounter a patient or client who is clearly struggling with being able
to pay their bills, it’s wonderful to have these relationships in your community that
you can help that person to connect with to sort of continue to apply for these benefits.
And finally, if you have a public computer, we certainly encourage people to do, to set
up benefits kiosks; we know of some places that have done that both in health centers,
in public housing units. We encourage you to try and make it semi-private, obviously,
and if you can have somebody, a volunteer who is familiar enough with using the computer
and the program to understand, to help somebody who may need help. But that’s a very easy
way to refer people to that program and to help them to use it to connect to benefits.
So with that, I want to leave my contact information. You’re welcome to email me with, with questions:
And to just sort of reiterate a few of the addresses I’ve talked about today, and NCOA’S
address where you can find all this information as well as the NCOA’s National Center for
Benefits outreach and enrollment, which is www.centerforbenefits.org, and then of course
www.benefitscheckup.org. And again, please use those sites, they’re free. We really,
really encourage you. And if you have any problems with any of them or can’t find
any information please don’t hesitate to let me know. So maybe I guess we can open
it up for Q&A. Are there any questions? Opening it up for Q&A
Dr. Webb: I see one of the questions Brandy, it’s coming up…
Q: If someone is on Medicaid, and the pharmacy mentions that the Medicare Part D card is
needed instead, should the person call Medicare, or Social Security Administration to find
out how she will be eligible? Or, I’m sorry, for Part D…
A: And if a person has, and you’re right, if a person has Medicaid, and then they go
to the pharmacy and they’re required to have Part D card, they should call Medicare
and the phone number is 1-800-MEDICARE. And that, they can request from Medicare to find
out information about what part D plan they are enrolled in, they can connect with their
plan to find out to get replacement cards, if they haven’t received their card yet.
But definitely Medicare is the agency that they should be in contact with if they are
getting sort of comment from their pharmacist about that.
Dr. Webb: Okay. Okay, and just for those who wanted to get today’s webinar, today’s
webinar will be archived. Brandy… Q: Can you tell us a little more about LYNET,
L-Y-N-E-T? A: LYNET, I think what you’re talking about
there; forgive me if I’m wrong, the prescription, sort of the pharmacy prescription sort of
access tool? I’m not sure if that’s what the person there was referring to...
Dear Webb. Yes. That’s what they’re asking about.
Continued Answer, Brandy Bauer: Yea. Yea okay. Because most, many pharmacists, not all, many
pharmacists, have access to this kind of database, which allows them to search for information
about the person, to find out if they’ve, for example, already received LIS, the low-income
subsidy. So usually when a person goes to the pharmacy, if they’re already enrolled
in the low-income subsidy, their information should be available in this sort of central
database, and the pharmacist should be able to check very quickly. And likewise, if a
person believes that they’re enrolled in this subsidy and they’re going to the pharmacist
and they’re being charged something much greater than the $ 1-6 range for their copayment
for prescription drugs, they can ask their pharmacist to please check, on their behalf,
in the system in order to be able to see whether they, you know, they have been enrolled in
to LIS. Because usually when a person goes to the pharmacist and has the LIS, low-income
subsidy, the pharmacist will have that information automatically when they sort of use their
Medicare card. And that way they know to charge that person, you know, whatever, $2.20 for
their prescription. Dr. Webb: Okay excellent. Okay. A follow-up
to that question… Q: Are copays, 1, 10 and 330 for full income
subsidiary or up to, sorry, but up to $6 for partial subsidy?
A: That’s correct. That’s correct. For somebody who is full low-income subsidy, meaning
they have an income below the poverty level, they qualify for what we call, Full LIS, they
would pay $1.10 for generics at the pharmacy and up to $3.30 for brand named drugs at the
pharmacy. For people who have slightly higher incomes, 101-135% of the FPL, they’re what
we call partial LIS. And they have, their copayments range from a couple of dollars
to $6.60, is the highest they’d be paying for a brand named drug.
Dr. Webb: Okay, great. And I think that answered a couple of questions that we see.
Brandy Bauer: I was going to say that, that information that person asked about the copayments
for the low-income subsidy, if you go to, NCOA has a website called My Medicare Matters,
it is called MyMedicareMatters.org, we have all of the information about those copayments
that are available on that site. So you can double check that against the chart.
Dr. Webb: Great. I think that’s about it for some of the questions right now. If anyone
still has questions please feel free to type them in. I see that there’s some other questions
also, Brandy, about webinars. And as you said, everyone can visit your website at NCOA.ORG
and be able to actually go through some of the existing webinars that you have on this
topic. In addition to that at the end of this presentation, which we are taping and we are
going to archive; the presentation will be accessible as well on our website at nchph.org.
So we’re going to ask you to check back within the next 24 hours and we should have
the PowerPoint presentation as well as the audio version of this webinar available. An
again you will be able to download the slides so that you can use the data as well. I do
not see any more questions currently in the queue so Brandy if we could just hold a couple
of seconds, just check and see if there are anymore questions. And as Brandy alluded to,
she gave, she shared her email contact information, we really want to encourage you if there is
anything that comes up on this particular area that you will contact her. Her email
address is brandy.bauer@ncoa.org. And again feel free to contact us at the National Center
for Health in Public Housing and we will also be able to facilitate your questions. I do
want to thank you very much for your expertise in this area. I think it is very beneficial
to those of the health providers who are serving seniors, especially those in low-income housing,
like public housing. And I think it’s helpful to know what they have available at this state
and local levels. We really appreciate all you the resources that you shared with us,
we will also link some of those suggested sites to our site as well, so that we would
be able to better serve seniors who live in public housing.
So thank you again for your time, I would like to thank everyone for joining us for
today’s topic. And I would like to let you know, to remind you that our National Center
for Health in Public Housing, we’re going to have our national conference May 1-3 at
the Westin in Alexandria, Virginia. You will have an opportunity to hear more information
on this presentation and other similar topics at our conference, so you’ll be able to
ask your person, your questions in person. So we really appreciate the National Council
on Aging for rendering their expertise on these topics. In addition to that we will
have some upcoming webinars, so we ask you to please feel free to join our mailing list
if you have not done so at the nchph.org website. Just click ‘join our mailing list’, and
you will get all recent updates on our upcoming webinars and other areas of training and technical
assistance. Again everyone thank you for joining us for today’s topic and we look forward
to working with you in the future. Thank you Brandy.
Brandy Bauer: Thank you!
Conclusion of presentation �