The state’s top law enforcement official and insurance regulator Wednesday warned that unscrupulous insurance agents are selling health plans of questionable value to unwary senior citizens. 

Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel and Insurance Commissioner Julie Benafield Bowman unveiled an effort to educate elderly Arkansans about private health insurance plans sanctioned by Medicare, called Medicare Advantage plans.

“These are private insurance companies making money selling policies to people that they do not want, need or understand, and that is wrong,” McDaniel said. 

If the elderly opt for them, the private plans replace coverage they would have received from Medicare, a federally funded program. 

Bowman said their aim was to inform elderly Arkansans about Medicare Advantage programs, and ensure they know what they’re signing up for if they choose to do so. 

“Education of our senior citizens is the most important thing we can do,” Bowman said. 

The campaign was laid out at a news conference in the Old Supreme Courtroom at the state Capitol. 

The benefits offered by the private plans, which were created under a 2003 federal law called the Medicare Modernization Act, vary widely, and may not be suitable for senior citizens the insurance agents target, McDaniel and Bowman said. 

Advocates of the plans, including the Bush administration and some in the health insurance industry, have said they help the financially stressed Medicare program provide coverage more efficiently, while reining in the spiraling cost of insuring the elderly. The Bush administration touted the plans as a way to offer senior citizens better choices and more control over their health coverage. 

But McDaniel criticized the plans, saying they’re a step toward privatizing Medicare and allow companies to profit while offering slim benefits to senior citizens. 

McDaniel and Bowman said some insurance agents, many from outside the state, have fanned out across Arkansas knocking on doors and selling the elderly unsuitable plans, for example policies their longtime doctors won’t accept. Traditional Medicare, by contrast, is widely accepted. 

Bowman said that Pope County and the Mountain Home area in particular have complained. 

She said that some Medicare Advantage plans charge a low premium but a high co-payment, making them ill-suited for senior citizens who frequently visit doctors. 

U. S. Rep. Marion Berry of Gillett, a Democrat who represents eastern Arkansas’ 1 st District, has also complained about “unethical” salesmen pushing plans on senior citizens. 

“Medicare recipients say they are being taken advantage of by those who are misrepresenting themselves and using illegal sales tactics to coerce seniors into signing up,” he wrote in a column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last month. 

For instance, he wrote, senior citizens have reported “rogue salesmen” contacting them by phone or in person claiming to be Medicare or Social Security Administration employees, and urging them to purchase a Medicare Advantage plan at once or risk losing all Medicare coverage. He said his offices have received more than 200 calls in recent months complaining about sales tactics. 

Democrats in the U. S. House, meanwhile, have moved to curtail payments to private insurers participating in the Medicare Advantage program in order to fund an expansion of a program that provides insurance to children. 

After complaints about the tactics to which Berry and others referred, the state Insurance Department in April revoked one insurance agent’s license and has investigated others. 

According to the revocation order, the agent, Martha Ann Thomas of San Antonio, forged a Little Rock woman’s name on a Medicare Advantage policy. The agent was fired by the insurer, Arkansas Community Care. 
Bowman said about 60, 000 insurance agents do business in the state. 

Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of the largest insurers in the state, said it trains outside agents that sell its Medicare Advantage products to strictly adhere to federal marketing rules and regulations, said spokesman Max Heuer. 
In addition, “We continually try to work with state officials to make sure that all consumers are protected,” Heuer said. 

Heuer said she wasn’t familiar with McDaniel’s statements Wednesday, but added, “clearly, no one wants unscrupulous people out there putting consumers in jeopardy.” 

Bowman said it’s difficult to prosecute unscrupulous agents because their elderly victims often make poor witnesses. She said, for instance, that the victims are often ashamed at having been misled, or don’t want to cause any trouble by helping to prosecute agents. 

The plans fall under the auspices of the federal government, and companies offering them are federally chartered, said Dick Horne, a lobbyist for the insurance industry. 

They said the best way to protect senior citizens is to educate them so they know what they’re getting into when an insurance agent seeks to sell a Medicare Advantage plan. 

To that end, McDaniel has created a health care bureau in his office to handle consumer complaints, and last month hired former state Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Jimmie Lou Fisher to counsel senior citizens on insurance issues. 

McDaniel also previewed a television public-service announcement emphasizing the plans aren’t the same as Medicare, and advising senior citizens to discuss the plans with someone they trust before signing up. The attorney general’s office spent roughly $ 100, 000 on the public service announcement. 
According to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, more than 33, 000 Arkansans have signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan. That’s out of roughly 363, 000 Arkansans over age 65.