Social Security benefits and Supplemental Security Income payments for approximately 70 million Americans will increase 5.9% in 2022, Social Security announced today.

Did you get a letter from FCMG about not participating with Excellus BCBS for 2022? Here is what you need to know:

Stand by ….  Apparently, nothing finalized with BCBS yet.

Here is part of an email I received from my agent upline/managers, at BCBS:

If you wait a week or so to see if a contract agreement is finalized (let’s say by the end of October) we can always change your plan during the Annual Enrollment Period: October 15th to December 7th.

You do have another enrollment opportunity to change your Medicare Advantage plan, which is January 1st to March 31st. This is called the Open Enrollment Period and can only be used when changing Medicare Advantage plan to Medicare Advantage plan.

I know this is a disruption to everyone who has FCMG (Family Care Medical Group). I also know if you have had a doctor for a long time, no one wants to change doctors. I get it!

But for the last two weeks I have been receiving information from a lot of different sources about this situation. FCMG dropped Excellus BCBS abruptly, without Excellus knowing that letters were being sent to FCMG patients that FCMG won’t be participating with Excellus for 2022.

So here is the other half of the story, communicated to me … you decide:

Dr. Brody from FCMG apparently wants to create his own insurance company called Salt City Senior Care Advantage. He apparently hired a third-party company called Health Care 360 (for the time being) to handle the transition and send out letters to FCMG patients. Apparently, this third-party company Health Care 360 will also be handling changing your enrollment to another company and taking you out of Excellus BCBS plan to help you find another plan. This Health Care 360 is an insurance agency.

You may have received a postcard for you to sign to allow Health Care 360 to call or contact you (which a client just emailed me a copy of the card today).

You need to find out if FCMG has authorization from you (by signing a form giving authorization to FCMG, from the doctor’s office) to give (or possibly sell) your information to other Medicare insurance carriers to offer you Medicare plan options or other insurance. This is a compliance issue and falls under PHI and PII laws and regulations. I will stop there!

Here are the meanings of PHI and PII:

I have a list of clients who have contacted me about the changes that are happening with FCMG. I will keep in contact with you and if you decide to change to a different insurance company, I would like to stay your Agent Of Record and make those changes with you.

Please call or email or text me if you have any additional questions.

I know that Excellus BCBS is supposed to have a meeting with FCMG on Friday 15th (the start of the Annual Enrollment Period). If you would like to wait to see what happens after that meeting, I can email everyone back that has contacted me to give you an update. Stay posted.

I am committed to my clients as an advocate and doing what’s right by my clients, as if you were my parents.