Youths at AmeriCorps Help Seniors with Part D
Mona Skinner, 79, needed help weeding through the insurance plans for her Medicare Part D enrollment forms, so she turned to the experts: two twentysomethings serving in the AmeriCorps service organization.
“I’ve been procrastinating,” said Skinner, a retired homemaker from Junction City. “There’s too many plans. … I just didn’t know which way to jump.”
After a 30-minute consultation inside the Junction City branch of Lane Community College, Skinner had a good idea of the plan she wanted. AmeriCorps members Megan Peters, 24, of Lexington, S.C., and Komal Soin, 23, of Philadelphia, ran the numbers on a computer screen, and sent Skinner on her way with a handful of printouts detailing the pluses and minuses of several insurance plans.
advertisement“It’s very satisfying (work),” Peters said. “It’s awesome to have that satisfaction of knowing that you helped them save money.”
Peters and Soin are part of a 10-member team that will be in Lane County this month providing Medicare enrollment assistance to seniors in outlying communities. The group, which arrived last week, is staying at a summer camp in Veneta. Each day they’ll meet with seniors in different communities, answering questions on everything from eligibility to avoiding the so called “doughnut hole,” which provides no coverage for prescription drugs.
“A lot of seniors are very confused by all of the plans that are there,” Soin said. “It really is a case-by-case (process) of seeing what works better with their incomes.”
“We’re just trying our best to save them money and find a good plan.”
It’s great to hear that young people are stepping up to help our seniors make sense of this complicated program.