Center for Medicare Advocacy.

The Medicare Hospice Benefit, Center for Medicare Advocacy.

Judith A. Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that counsels beneficiaries, said the rules allowed immense complexity and variation in benefits.

Vicki Gottlich, who counsels elderly people as a lawyer at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said: "The low-income subsidy is very important.

Judith Stein, right, executive director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, with Jocelyne Watrous, a beneficiary consultant.

A lawyer at one consumer group, Toby Edelman of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, asserted that "cutbacks in the survey and enforcement process have already begun."

Members of the coalition include the Center for Medicare Advocacy, which denounced the legislation as a giveaway to insurance and pharmaceutical companies when it was passed in November.

Toby Edelman, a lawyer at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, which represents beneficiaries, said: "The administration is placing less emphasis on direct enforcement of standards of care.

Traditional Medicare with a Part D and Medigap plan offers the most flexibility, said Judith Stein, founder of the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

"It's a complicated year for Medicare beneficiaries," said Judith Stein, executive director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that helps Medicare beneficiaries.