SOURCE: www.cms.gov
As eligible seniors who have entered the Medicare Part D donut hole this year begin to receive their tax-free, one-time rebate check for $250 starting this Thursday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius and senior officials from the Administration on Aging and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services today launched a national education effort to ensure that seniors have the information they need to protect themselves from potential scams or fraud when it comes to their Medicare benefits.
The national fraud prevention campaign will include radio, television and print advertising and outreach efforts.
The campaign will begin with a $1 million radio buy that will run in June through August as $250 tax-free rebate checks get mailed to eligible seniors each month. CMS will purchase time in markets with high percentages of Medicare recipients who fall into the donut hole and time on ethnic radio to communicate with groups of seniors who have been particularly targeted by scam artists.
Thirty second and sixty second radio spots will be produced in English, Spanish, Korean and Armenian for the initial radio buy. English language spots will begin running in a small number of markets by the end of this week. The number of markets will steadily increase and the national buy will be completely in place by the end of June.
CMS will post audio files of the English language and Spanish language 60 second spots later today at www.cms.gov.