800-MEDICARE’S FAULTY INFO

Medicare's toll-free telephone line, one of the main vehicles for disseminating information about new prescription drug benefits and drug discount cards, gives accurate answers less than two-thirds of the time, Congressional investigators say. In a test of the service, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, found that 29 percent of callers received inaccurate answers, while 10 percent got no answers at all.

Beneficiaries can obtain a credit of $600 a year with their discount cards if their incomes do not exceed certain levels ($12,569 for an individual). Callers who asked about the assistance got wrong answers 79 percent of the time. Many operators did not realize they had to consider the source of income, as well as the amount. Social Security benefits are counted as income, for example, but life insurance benefits are not.

In another recent report, the accountability office found that Medicare provided even less accurate information to doctors who inquired about the proper way to bill for treating Medicare patients. In response to 300 test calls, the accountability office said, customer service representatives gave correct and complete responses to only 4 percent of the billing questions. About 54 percent of the answers were simply wrong, and 42 percent were incomplete or partly correct, it said.

Dr. McClellan (Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) said the government had increased the training of customer service representatives so they would give more accurate answers.

-Adapted from “Test Finds Inaccuracies in Help Line for Medicare”, By Robert Pear, The New York Times, December 12, 2004