#enrollment

#enrollment

The COVID-19 pandemic changed society in 2020. Schools closed down. Employees were told to work from home. And going to the doctor for routine visits suddenly became a risky prospect. In response to the circumstances at hand, Medicare expanded enrollees' access to telehealth services in early 2020 to ensure that seniors could safely tend to their medical needs from home. And for several years that followed, the waivers enacted in 2020 remained in place, allowing Medicare enrollees to continue using telehealth services.

Low or $0 premiums plus supplemental benefits that traditional Medicare is not authorized by Congress to cover - dental, vision and hearing care - have attracted increasing numbers of seniors. The many disadvantages, including the need to get preauthorization for procedures or medicines your doctor has prescribed or the narrow group of health professionals that are in-network in many MA plans, are not mentioned in advertisements by brokers hired to recruit members.

New data, however, suggests that the profession's talent crunch may be - cautiously - easing. Graduates who earned a bachelor's or master's degree in accounting fell to 55,152 in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). That's a 6.6% decline from the year prior - still a drop, but a slower one than the 9.6% decline in 2022-23

"We've been anticipating this time between now and last November and we're looking forward to the new collaboration and coordination," Cal Poly Maritime Director of University Affairs Chelsea McClain said. "We will be integrating the academic year from quarter to semester. Cal Maritime was already semester and now Cal Poly will transition."