The only webpage on Medicare.gov that was dedicated to describing how the Affordable Care Act affects Medicare was quietly taken down last year, a government-transparency group has found.
Before December of 2017, visitors to Medicare.gov could navigate to a page called “The Affordable Care Act & Medicare” from the website’s “About Us” section. The page told Medicare enrollees whether the passage of the Affordable Care Act—commonly known as Obamacare—meant they had to sign up for new plans. (It didn’t.) The page also emphasized that the law now meant Medicare covered more disease-prevention services and brand-name prescription drugs than before. Transparency advocates worry that the page’s unexplained disappearance, after months of hot debate over Obamacare’s fate, could be confusing for Medicare users, leaving them wondering if their status has changed.
“Doing things quietly can oftentimes be more confusing than having a notice or having some kind of other communication about why things are changing,” says Toly Rinberg, who tracks changes to .gov websites for the non-profit Sunlight Foundation. Rinberg and a team of colleagues discovered the change to Medicare.gov. Read more…