NJ Life and Health Insurance Group
600 Mule Rd Unit 10 Toms River, NJ 08757
848-226-6897 | info@njlifeandhealth.com
Dear Valued Client,
As your trusted Medicare advisor, we have some very important news to share.
You may be aware some changes are coming to Medicare Part D for 2025. Namely, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has imposed a $2,000 cap on Medicare Part D (prescription drug coverage) out of pocket expenses, and the Coverage Gap, also known as the “Donut Hole”, has been removed for 2025. These changes will benefit beneficiaries with high medication costs. However, the insurance companies are expected to raise premiums of their Part D plans for 2025 to offset these changes. That means that beneficiaries with currently little to no medication costs may see an increase in those costs in 2025.
Unfortunately, the major changes do not end there. As of 2025, the most common Medicare Part D plans will no longer provide brokers with the nominal compensation used to cover the operational and compliance costs of reviewing, enrolling, and servicing clients in these plans. Therefore, brokers such as ourselves will no longer receive payment from the insurance companies for helping you evaluate your Medicare Part D coverage for 2025 this Annual Enrollment Period.
As advocates for our Medicare clients, we are extremely upset with this outcome. This change will drastically affect the ability of independent brokers to offer unbiased advice on plan choices. The insurance companies, and our competitors alike, may use these changes as an opportunity to steer you into Medicare Advantage plans, where insurance companies profit most, and broker compensation remains in-tact. Steering beneficiaries into a plan based on compensation goes against our values and we will not be introducing that bias into our evaluations.
We would like to remain your trusted and unbiased advisor on Part D plans, but to cover the costs of doing so, we must charge a consultation fee of $50 going forward*. If you do not want to pay this consultation fee, don’t worry, you CAN do this evaluation yourself, and we’re here to help you do so! We’ll be providing a step-by-step guide and video to navigate you through how we complete these evaluations on Medicare.gov.
Please stay tuned. You will receive the usual communication from us on how you would like to proceed for this year’s Annual Enrollment Period, with an option to choose the fee-based review or be sent the educational materials to run your own Part D evaluation.
We understand that these premium increases and this new consultation fee may be difficult to manage amongst the many rising costs you’ve seen this year. If these changes do lead you to consider other plan changes such as your Medicare Supplement or moving into a Medicare Advantage plan, we are still here to help as your trusted advisor, free of charge, to provide you the unbiased advice you’ve come to expect.
Sincerely,
The Team at NJ Life and Health Insurance Group
*Consultation To Be Provided Through NJLH Consulting Group, LLC