Medicare Rx open enrollment is soon upon us. The open enrollment period begins October 15 and ends December 7. I cannot stress enough how important it is for seniors to check the status of their plans. These plans change every year.
First CMS (Center for Medicare Services) changes the plans automatically with changes in deductible, donut hole provisions and TROOP (True out of pocket limits). Other than the deductible increase, most of these changes are positive for the consumer.
Drug formularies change and that can be a big deal for those taking expensive medications. Also pharmacy relationships change. So maybe your copay will increase if you continue to use the same pharmacy.
You will be receiving a notice of changes in your plan. Please pay attention to this and see if you are still happy with your plan. Maybe your medications have changed and you need to review the plan for that reason as well.
Fortunately, Medicare has an excellent website that allows you to evaluate the plans. I believe that all eligible beneficiaries should become familiar with this site. It’s fascinating to see how running the reports with different pharmacies can result in quite different results in overall costs for the year. Even though you cannot yet get 2016 information, you can input your Rx and it will be saved for future use. This way you can experiment with the site.
We have prepared step by step screen shots of how to compare these plans and put the .pdf on our website. Assuming they don’t change the screens, this should be helpful. Go to www.medicare.gov, click on the “Drug Coverage” (Part D) Button on the top. Then click on the drop down menu for Find health and Drug plans. Once you run the reports, you can even enroll in the new plan online directly at the Medicare website. It’s really quite simple. We want to empower Medicare beneficiaries to have the tools to find the best plan for their needs.
Most insurance brokers do not have the resources to run this report multiple times for their clients. Candidly, it is not cost effective to do so. Brokers get paid a small one time fee to enroll them in an Rx plan. In many cases, if the client has been participating for over 5 years, there is no compensation. Our office will only run these reports for existing clients that also have Medicare supplement business with us. We start running them when the website is up for 2016. As of my press deadline it is not.
The local office of HICAP (Health Insurance Counseling & Advocacy Program) does a terrific job of helping senior run these reports. They will be inundated as well, so it would be good to get on their appointment schedule soon. They are located at 1647 Hartnell Suite 8 and the phone number is 223-0999. Many of our clients go there because they are able to run multiple reports for them.
The most important cost saving advice I can give continues to be, take generics if at all possible. The price difference can be astounding.
Speaking of pills, I want to share something we learned when our daughter was hospitalized and needed to take “horse pills” multiple times per day. The nurse said that the best way to swallow pills, rather than tilt your head back, is actually to keep your head level or tilt it down slightly to open the passageway. It was amazing what a difference it made. You can tilt your head back to get the bills further back in your throat, but just tilt down to swallow them.
Note that another cost increase may be coming to higher income earners. It is our understanding that Social Security beneficiaries will not receive a cost-of-living increase in 2016, and one ripple effect will be higher Medicare Part B premiums for beneficiaries at the higher end of the income scale. So those that are subject to the IMRAA tax will likely see their costs rise.
