HHS, CMS and the Administration on Aging Launch Fraud Prevention Education Campaign
to Ensure Medicare Beneficiaries are Protected from Scams Kicks off with a $1 million national & ethnic radio buy targeted around the $250 one time tax-free donut hole rebate check included in the Affordable Care Act 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 & Medicaid Services (CMS) 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 national radio buy that will run in June through August as $250 tax free rebate checks get mailed out 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 posted audio files of the English language and Spanish language 60 second spots yesterday on the Medicare.gov <http://www.medicare.gov/> website. Scripts for the spots can be found on Medicare.gov <http://www.medicare.gov/> . The press release is posted today for June 8, 2010 at http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/press_releases.asp. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- Note: If you have problems accessing any hyperlink in this message, please copy and paste the URL into your Internet browser. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to a Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) provider listserv, go to (http://www.cms.gov/prospmedicarefeesvcpmtgen/downloads/Provider_Listser vs.pdf). If you would like to unsubscribe from a specific provider listserv, please go to (https://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa.exe?INDEX <https://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa.exe?INDEX> ) to unsubscribe or to leave the appropriate listserv. Please DO NOT respond to this email. This email is a service of CMS and routed through an electronic mail server to communicate Medicare policy and operational changes and/or updates. Responses to this email are not routed to CMS personnel. Inquiries may be sent by going to (http://www.cms.gov/ContactCMS <http://www.cms.gov/ContactCMS> ). Thank you.
