Past urgent notices

Past notice Posted August 18, 2025

Sonder Health Plans — Important Medicare Update

Sonder Health Plans coverage ends October 1, 2025

Georgia members have a special enrollment period to choose a new plan

What is happening

• Sonder Health Plans, Inc. was placed into receivership by the Superior Court of Fulton County on August 13, 2025. Every Sonder Medicare Advantage plan will end effective October 1, 2025.
• You will not lose Medicare. If you do not pick a new plan, you will move to Original Medicare and be automatically enrolled in a Part D prescription drug plan.
• Special enrollment period: August 13 through October 31, 2025. CMS opened this window so Sonder members can move to a Medicare Advantage plan from another insurer.
• September 30, 2025: the last day to enroll in a new plan and avoid moving to Original Medicare.
• October 15 through December 7: open enrollment for 2026 Medicare Advantage plans.
• Your doctors must keep seeing you as a Sonder member and can only charge your normal cost share for the visit.

If you are on a Sonder plan, please do not wait until October. Call me and we will go through your options together and find a plan that keeps your doctors and your prescriptions.

Kept for reference. Dates and details were accurate when this was posted and may no longer apply.

Past notice Posted May 8, 2025

Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans — Medicare & Medicaid Update

CMS finalizes new integration requirements for certain D-SNPs

One ID card and one health assessment for some Medicare and Medicaid members

What changed

• CMS finalized requirements meant to make Medicare and Medicaid easier to navigate for people enrolled in Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs).
• One ID card. Beginning with 2027 coverage, certain integrated D-SNPs must give members a single identification card that works as the ID for both their Medicare and their Medicaid plan.
• One health assessment. Those plans must also use one integrated base Health Risk Assessment instead of asking members to complete a separate base assessment for each program.
• Not every D-SNP. These requirements apply to certain D-SNPs that meet CMS's definition of an applicable integrated plan — not to every plan in the same way.
• Timing. The changes are for 2027 coverage, but the work starts in 2026: requirements involving 2027 member materials begin October 1, 2026, and the integrated Health Risk Assessment applies to assessments tied to enrollment effective January 1, 2027 or later.
• If you have both Medicare and Medicaid, how this affects you depends on your D-SNP, your Medicaid coverage, and which requirements apply to your plan.

I can help you review your coverage and understand how your Medicare and Medicaid benefits work together.

CMS proposed these integrated ID card and integrated assessment requirements on November 26, 2024 and finalized them on April 4, 2025. The final CMS announcement describes them as applying to certain D-SNPs by 2027.

Kept for reference. Dates and details were accurate when this was posted and may no longer apply.

Past notice Posted October 27, 2024

Food & Utilities Benefits — Medicare Advantage Update

CMS strengthens the rules for supplemental benefits for the chronically ill

What the SSBCI standards mean for food, produce and utility help

What changed

• CMS finalized new standards for Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill — SSBCI — which some Medicare Advantage plans offer.
• SSBCI can include non-medical help such as healthy food, produce and assistance with utilities, when a plan offers that benefit and it is expected to improve or maintain the health or overall function of an eligible chronically ill member.
• Not everyone qualifies. These benefits are not available to every Medicare Advantage member simply because a plan advertises them. Eligibility depends on your health circumstances and the criteria the plan set for that benefit.
• Plans offering SSBCI now have to support these benefits with evidence that they can reasonably be expected to improve or maintain the health or overall function of the chronically ill members receiving them.
• CMS also tightened marketing and communication rules so these benefits are not presented in a way that makes them look available to everyone.
• Effective: the requirements generally apply to Medicare Advantage coverage beginning January 1, 2025.
• If your plan offers food, utility or other special supplemental benefits, what is available and what you have to meet to get it varies from plan to plan.

I can help you review your Medicare plan benefits and understand which benefits and eligibility rules apply to your coverage.

CMS announced the Contract Year 2025 final rule on April 4, 2024. Its original 2019 SSBCI guidance is worth knowing about too: it confirms that food, produce and utility assistance were already allowed as SSBCI, and already tied to chronically ill eligibility, long before 2026.

Kept for reference. Dates and details were accurate when this was posted and may no longer apply.