The Medicare Rights Center (Medicare Rights) appreciates this opportunity to comment on CMS-10891—Medicaid Program; Medicare Savings Program Application and Eligibility Determinations comment request. Medicare Rights is a national, nonprofit organization that works to ensure access to affordable and equitable health care for older adults and people with disabilities through counseling and advocacy, educational programs, and public policy initiatives. Each year, Medicare Rights provides services and resources to over three million people with Medicare, family caregivers, and professionals.
Our comments are informed by our work helping thousands of people with Medicare apply for Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs). As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has documented, MSP processes are notoriously confusing for applicants, as well as many advocates and eligibility workers.
For this reason, we applaud efforts to reduce friction in the system whenever possible in an attempt to get more people into MSPs where they can better access affordable, high-quality health care. We appreciate this update to the MSP application template and find that it is a significant improvement on the previous design.
