Posted December 13, 20169:46 am
Medicare Premium Assistance stopped on December 13, 2016 for about 13,000 Ohioans unless individuals reapply and are found eligible.
The Medicare Premium Assistance Programs (MPAP) is the umbrella that covers the Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary (SLMB), Qualified Individual-1 (QI-1), Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB), and Qualified Working Disabled Individual (QWDI) programs. Recently, the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) discovered that, due to a computer glitch, it was still paying monthly Medicare Part B premiums to the federal government on behalf of people who had previously received notice stopping their MPAP benefit.
On November 16, 2016, ODM mailed another notice indicating their MPAP benefits will stop on December 31, 2016 unless they reapply and are found eligible at their county ODJFS office. The notice says “MPAP” in red ink at the very bottom of each page.
Additionally, individuals should also receive letters from the Social Security Administration (SSA) warning them that Ohio will still stop paying their monthly Part B premiums, and that, therefore, SSA will begin deducting those premiums from their monthly Social Security payments. Individuals may seek help not because of the ODM notice, but because they’ve received the SSA letter, and/or because they discovered that their monthly Social Security payments are now short about $104 (or whatever the amount of their Part B premium).
Individuals affected by this glitch should reapply for MPAP at their county office as soon as possible.