Healthcare Medicare Part D Medicare

Healthcare

Medicare Part D

Medicare began offering outpatient prescription drug benefits under their Medicare part D program in 2006. All Medicare beneficiaries are eligible for this program and as of January 2007 nearly 24 million people had enrolled in some form of the program. Finding ways to control and pay for drug costs is an ever alarming problem for both Medicare and consumers alike. Medicare Part D uses complex and high levels of cost sharing to help defray the high drug costs that face seniors today (Hsu, Fung, Price, Huang, Brand, PharmD, Fireman, and Newhouse, 2008).

Medicare prescription drug coverage was introduced to help people on Medicare with the cost of their prescriptions. Anyone with Medicare is eligible to enroll in a prescription drug plan under Part D. Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage is private insurance with government funding and mandated minimum benefit requirements. The standard Medicare drug benefit offers insurance that will pay some drug expenses while protecting consumers against very high costs. The federal government is helping to cover the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit but private companies are administering these benefits. All people with Medicare are eligible for Part D coverage, regardless of medical history or income (Hsu, Fung, Price, et al., 2008). This Medicare drug benefit is completely voluntary and people may choose whether to enroll in it or not. For those who didn't have any previous coverage this program affords them with the opportunity to get help with the rising costs of their medication. For many people this program replaces coverage that they had with an HMO, Medigap or Medicaid (Lichtenberg and Sun, 2007).

The coverage of prescription drugs by Medicare was designed to reduce the financial burden of medicines taken by the elderly. It had been found that many people were cutting back on life saving medicines or not refilling prescriptions in an effort to save money (Study examines the impact of Medicare Part D on drug adherence among the elderly, 2008).

The goal is to lower the patients out of pocket costs so that medications become more affordable and they are more likely to use them.

Although the Medicare prescription drug program has provided access to medications for seniors at a lower cost to the government than was originally expected and has lowered the out of pocket costs for the consumers, there is talk about needing to overhaul the program. Critics contend that the government should be able to negotiate lower costs for prescription drugs than private insurances can. It is also felt that the entire program is too confusing for the elderly beneficiaries and needs to be made more understandable (Wechsler, 2008). All of these proposed changes come with Medicare still trying to uphold there objectives of providing affordable prescription drugs to seniors.