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A government document that you can understandBy KRIS HUNDLEY © St. Petersburg Times, published January 15, 2001 Here's a shocker: straight talk from the government. The Health Care Financing Administration, the people who run Medicare, recently won the No Gobbledygook Award for its Medicare & You handbook. The award, sponsored by the Vice President's National Partnership for Reinventing Government, recognizes agencies that can translate bureaucratese into plain English. HCFA's prize-winning pamphlet, which was mailed to 39-million Medicare recipients, does its best to explain the government's health insurance for the elderly and disabled. It lays out the differences between Parts A and B and explains alternatives such as Medicare HMOs. The booklet, which also comes in large print, Spanish and Chinese, may lose some readers, however, when it tells them to call their "fiscal intermediary" with billing questions. (Translation: That's the company that pays doctors and hospitals on behalf of Medicare. And good luck getting through.) HCFA's prize for making a cumbersome government program easy to understand? A plaque adorned with a turkey, meant to represent the absence of gobbledygook. Wouldn't a dictionary have been more appropriate?
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From the Times Business report
From the AP
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