Forced to reboot
After firing, former Apprise team leader organizes new Medicare consulting program
Akey voice and advocate for Medicare beneficiaries seemed to go silent during the latest Medicare open enrollment period that ended Dec. 7.
Turns out, that voice was only slightly, and temporarily, muted.
Bill McKendree, the public face for Apprise’s state-funded Medicare consulting program the previous 12 years, was fired from that position in July for reasons that he says still elude him.
The next day, he and eight to 10 Apprise volunteers who left with him met to discuss starting their own nonprofit Medicare counseling program.
Up and running just weeks later, the Pennsylvania Healthcare Benefit Support Program closely resembles the work Mr. McKendree did at Apprise, a statewide program that operates under Wesley Family Services in partnership with the Allegheny County Area Agency on Aging.
The new program’s mission, as with Apprise, is to help seniors and others navigate the ins and outs of Medicare. With the new program, Mr. McKendree and his volunteers also assist those eligible for medical assistance.
“The best thing about this is I get to rethink what we are going to do next,” he said in a recent interview. “How can we serve the community best? We’re only limited by the resources we can get.”
That’s not a minor point: With no public funding or permanent office space, the Pennsylvania Healthcare Benefit Support Program served far fewer seniors this year than Mr. McKendree and his team did at Apprise, he said. The meetings with volunteers usually took place in restaurants, a volunteer’s home or, most recently, the Birmingham Free Clinic on South Side.
Also, Mr. McKendree no longer collects a salary.
What led to his firing remains something of a mystery — the five-paragraph letter on Wesley Family Services letterhead handed to him July 8 said he was being terminated “as a result of poor performance.” (The state coordinator for Apprise said in an email that the program cannot discuss confidential personnel matters.)
For years, Mr. McKendree had been a direct information channel for the public, from monthly “lunch-and-learn” sessions he organized each spring and summer to the dozens of presentations over which he presided in senior centers and church basements.
“I don’t think you could replace Bill because his knowledge is so in-depth in that area,” said James Pschirer, assistant professor at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. It was Mr. Pschirer who, at Mr. McKendree’s suggestion, recruited firstyear pharmacy students each of the past 12 years to help counsel seniors on their Medicare options.
“He really was the foundation of how that program ran,” said Mary Herbert, clinic director for the Birmingham Clinic’s Program for Health Care to Underserved Populations.
He also was not afraid to make politically risky statements. As local team leader for Apprise, Mr. McKendree often presented a counterweight argument to the million-dollar marketing campaigns by insurers promoting Medicare Advantage plans.
He would instead point out the virtues of traditional Medicare-plus-supplement plans — an option he still considers the best choice for basic medical coverage, notwithstanding the dental and vision coverage, free gym memberships and other enticements of Medicare Advantage plans.
But, Mr. McKendree said, “I was never challenged in an aggressive way by UPMC or Highmark or Aetna that I represented a threat to their business.
“If that was the case, they wouldn’t show up at the lunch-and-learn.”
He does wonder if his public statements played some indirect role in his termination, a career setback that he called “really devastating to me.”
Mr. McKendree, who holds a law degree from Duquesne University and teaches a class on Medicare for Pitt’s pharmacy students, estimates the Pennsylvania Healthcare Benefit Support Program helped 700 to 1,000 people in the latest July-September pre-enrollment period.
According to the county’s Area Agency on Aging, the Apprise program helped 1,010 people during the same period, a 20% decrease from the previous year’s total of 1,277.
Mr. McKendree is still looking for funding sources and admits that “I still don’t know if we can survive or not. We’re going to continue as long as we can, as well as we can.”
Funding concerns aside, not being tied to a government-funded program does have its advantages, he said.
“We can help the community understand how their health care system works, and how to access the best health care they can at the most affordable cost, without worrying about who we’re offending.”
“We can help the community understand how their health care system works, and how to access the best health care they can at the most affordable cost, without worrying about who we’re offending.”
— Bill McKendree