An Employer's Guide to Health Care Cost Containment » Medicare Coordination of Benefits

What is Voluntary Data Share Agreement (VDSA)?

Jennifer Posey — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:42:35 +0000

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) instituted the VDSA program to provide better communication between itself, employers and insurers. This exchange of information ensures all parties, including Medicare, have all necessary information to determine which insurance company should be paying medical claims first.

Employers who sign a VDSA with CMS will provide a quarterly [...]

Why Employers Should Require Medicare Enrollment in Their Summary Plan Descriptions

Tanya Henry — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:53:25 +0000

As an employer you may believe that not requiring your Medicare eligible population to enroll in Medicare is somehow a benefit to your employee. You may believe that you are not allowed to force your Medicare eligible members to enroll. However, both of these statements are false.

How does mandatory Medicare enrollment work? As an employer [...]

Coordination of Benefits Rules are Commonly Misunderstood

Angela Travis — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:25:05 +0000

Most people are not aware that there are laws that govern Coordination of benefits. In my experience, most consumers think they can just pick which Insurance carrier that they want to be primary. For example, a spouse on a plan may also carry his/her own coverage through their employer. However, that policy may have a [...]

Medicare Language in your Plan Design Documents

Michael G. Browning — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:19:01 +0000

Coordination with Medicare is one of the more challenging processes for many third-party administrators. Many times they are unaware if your employees are carrying Medicare or are eligible to receive it and are not signed up for coverage.

This can be a significant and costly problem for your company when you have active employees who are also [...]