Medicare Preventative Services
Awareness Campaign

 

For more than four decades, Medicare has provided health care to millions of seniors and people with disabilities. Traditionally, Medicare’s focus has been treating disease, not preventing it. That is all changing with the Affordable Care Act. Provisions in the health care law create new benefits, such as a yearly wellness visit, and make many preventive services and screenings for conditions like diabetes, high cholesterol, and cancer, as well as vaccinations, free for beneficiaries.

This new emphasis on prevention will not only benefit people on Medicare by detecting diseases early, when they are the most treatable, but it will go a long way toward reducing the $2 trillion that the United States spends on treating preventable, chronic illnesses. But these new benefits will only be effective if seniors and people with disabilities understand their new rights.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has begun a preventive benefits campaign called “Share the News, Share the Health” to help spread the word. Families USA has also developed a series of fact sheets aimed at both advocates and Medicare recipients that discuss how people on Medicare can take advantage of these benefits and how advocates can answer questions and resolve any problems beneficiaries may encounter.

CMS will be posting online ads and community events all over the country starting in July and is releasing a nationwide public service announcement that is available on YouTube.

The Medicare Rights Center has created a Fact-sheet: Medicare-Covered Preventative Services

Families USA Materials:

For consumers:
Medicare's New Preventive Care Benefit: What It Means for You
Medicare's New Wellness Visit: What It Means for You

For advocates:
An Advocate's Guide to the New Preventive Services Benefit in Medicare
An Advocate's Guide to the New Annual Wellness Visit Benefit in Medicare

 

6/11