Pam Kazlauskas (00:04.782)
Hello everyone and welcome to today's Navigate Tuesday tip. I'm Pam and today we're gonna be talking about the Medicare Part C card. So things like the Q card, Anthem Flex, and there are probably others that I am not naming, but any of these cards that provide income to a resident.

So what is a U-card, which is what UnitedHealthcare calls theirs? It serves as the ID card for those who have a Medicare plan under UnitedHealthcare. For members that qualify, it also includes supplemental benefits that come with a cash amount to the resident that can be used to purchase over-the-counter meds, food, and pay for some utilities. What's been causing the confusion is how to handle these payments. It's generally

funded through special supplemental benefits for the chronically ill, so not everyone is going to qualify for these, but it's part of that Medicare Part C benefit. First question is, how do know if your resident has one?

The best rule of thumb is to ask all residents if their Medicare plan comes with any sort of a cash benefit tied to it. It's most likely tied to a Medicare Advantage plan, but it's a good idea to always make it clear that residents must disclose all sources of income to you. And especially if a resident has Medicare, ask them if they have part B and part C, the premiums are deductible, and these things may not show up

on EIV or there may be some deduction that you can't identify on EIV that may be a premium for one of these plans. So always ask any time there seems to be a deduction from EIV's reported social security that you can't identify.

Pam Kazlauskas (02:04.044)
Always let your residents know it is always better to tell us than not to. Make sure you're handing out the relevant fact sheets. Make sure they are bringing to you anything they're not sure of because failure to disclose it to you could result in them getting penalties or even losing subsidy later on.

Remember the benefits that they're receiving, the cash payments that they may be receiving are gonna count as income. So you wanna also make sure that any premiums that they are paying are counted as expenses and any over the counter expenses that they're spending this money on are also counted as expenses.

Best references for these cards. UnitedHealthcare on their website actually has a section about Medicare Advantage that goes over what these U cards are, so that's some helpful information. And then I found an article on Medical News Today that also talks about Medicare Part C and the supplemental benefits. If you go to the UnitedHealthcare website and just do a search for Medicare Advantage, that should pull it up.

And if you go to Medical News Today and look up Medicare Part C, that should pull up that article.

So that's gonna do it for this. What would you like to see on Navigate's Tuesday Tips? Please let us know. You can email Vicki or myself at the email addresses on your screen. We'd love to hear from you and we'll see you on the next one.