WHAT YOU NEED NOW - CONTENT UPDATED THROUGH THE DAY
Nov. 9, 2005
CONSUMER NEWS ANALYSIS
Medicare Prescription Site Virtually Impossible to Navigate, Decipher;
Enlist Your Pharmacist, Other Experts to Help
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
Hinton, WV (HNN) – There’s good news and bad news about the Medicare
Prescription plan today; the good news is that there is information online
about the plan that goes into effect next year. The site: www.medicare.gov
should have plenty of information.
Now the bad news: This is a high-tech site, a geek’s paradise complete with
PDF downloads, which will crash some computers. Using the Mozilla browser,
which works 24/7 to keep spam out of my system, PDF (Portable Document
Format, invented by Adobe) downloads will often shut down my computer;
that’s why I avoid them.
The site is also as confusing as I indicated in a column last month. It’s so
complicated that Salt Lake City, UT tax attorney Bill Vogel and his wife
Donna, a retired nurse recruiter, told the Salt Lake Tribune that “selecting
a Medicare prescription drug plan has left them confused – and angry.” Bill
Vogel: “There is one good aspect to this. We will have national health
insurance sooner than later. Seniors will be sick of this, the
complications, the paperwork.”
Coming from a tax attorney, that’s some recommendation!
The new coverage, which seniors can sign up for beginning next Tuesday, Nov.
15, 2005, is the biggest change in the 40-year-history of the Medicare
program, adopted in 1965 to provide health insurance for people ages 65 and
older and those with certain disabilities. Everybody eligible for
prescription drug coverage should by now have received a hefty booklet from
Medicare. As I indicated in my previous commentary, navigating this booklet
is a major chore.
Currently, about 42 million Americans are eligible for Medicare, though
about a fourth of those have adequate coverage through current jobs or
retiree benefits, according to the Utah newspaper.
In Utah, as in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, seniors are overwhelmed by
options. In Pennsylvania, there are more than 50 companies offering a
multitude of plans; in Utah, a state with about the same population as West
Virginia, there are 18 companies offering more than 50 plans ”each requiring
seniors to work a complex calculus involving need, existing coverage,
premiums, deductibles, co-pays and drugs covered,” according to The Tribune.
Advocates for senior citizens say the new insurance program clearly will
benefit seniors who are low-income, or have no drug coverage, or are on
Medigap plans or use expensive medications - something that happens
routinely in the last months of life, according to the informative piece in
the Utah newspaper.
In an attempt to find out which – if any – plan I should pick, I asked my
pharmacist at the Hinton Kroger store if he could run a printout of a year’s
prescription drug costs. He could and he did, cheerfully; that’s why he’s my
pharmacist! I have a $7.95 a month discount card that the pharmacist tells
me is worth about 3 times that in savings every month. It covers both my
wife and me. In the past year, from Nov. 30, 2004 to Nov. 8, 2005, our
prescription drugs cost just under $550 for the period; that’s out-of-pocket
money, not including the premiums for the discount card.
Monthly premiums for plans in the 2006 Medicare book range from about $45 to
under $25, with most in the $40 monthly range. Do the math: $40 times 12
months equals $480. Add in the co-pay for each prescription and you’ll
probably pay more than what I do with the Peoples Prescription Plan that
costs under $8 a month.
My suggestions: Get as much information as you can, including getting a
printout of your drug costs from your friendly neighborhood pharmacist.
Also, take your time; you have until May 15, 2006 to select a plan. As Ed
Murrow would say: “Good night, and good luck!”
Web site again: www.medicare.gov
