Ending the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Confusion

Ending the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Confusion

-- George Edwards

Merry Christmas to all of you, or your friends and relatives over 65:

Click here for a detailed step by step procedure to use with the www.medicare.gov Web site to automatically compare the costs of all the Medicare prescription drug plans available in your zip code -- given your particular prescription drug usage. It gets rid of the confusion, and sure beats looking up and calculating every company individually. The differences in annual cost between the various plans can be substantial.

Insurance agent, David Goldrup, (843) 222-4526 impressed me by showing me how to compare plans step-by-step in our home. Now I can choose the plan and company that is best for us whether he represents that particular company or not. We will use him because of that honesty. Unfortunately, he personally serves only Horry County S.C., Brunswick County N.C. and New Hanover County N.C. counties; he is currently only licensed to even give insurance advice in South Carolina, North Carolina and Massachusetts. Personally, as the costs should be no different, I favor using an agent as opposed to working through an 800 number and sitting on hold.

As there is no way that I can foresee what my future prescription drug costs will be, I will enroll before January 1 unless I choose a plan that has no yearly deductible (and excepting for individual drug costs, annual costs appear to be essentially the same between plans if you exceed that deductible -- monthly premiums are generally less when there is a deductible). I want my prescription drug costs during the first few months of the year to count in the deductible if I choose a plan with a deductible.

I certainly can't see taking the 1% per month penalty that accumulates for every month you are not in a plan after May 15, 2006.

I took a few hours documenting the step by step procedure. Certainly, you can struggle through on your own a plan at a time. But the program is very redundant and finding an efficient way to compare all the plans is not obvious. My wife has used the procedure without other coaching (to play some "what if") so hopefully it will easily work for you.

If you find anything confusing, please let me know where it is and I will be glad to help. (Click contact the GIAC web master; please use GIAC as the first word in the subject block to help ensure your message will not be dropped as spam.)

As I am not an insurance agent all I can do otherwise is point you to the Medicare site or the manual "Medicare and You 2005" everyone over 65 should have gotten in the mails.

Merry Christmas, again,

George

Step by Step Procedure to compare Medicare drug plans using software on the government’s Medicare site, www.medicare.gov.

Insurance agent, Mr. David Goldrup, (843) 222-4526, showed me how to compare Medicare drug plans using software on the government’s Medicare site, www.medicare.gov --

Click “Compare Medicare Prescription Drug Plans.”

On the new screen, scroll down and click the red arrow to the right of “Find a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan.”

On the new screen ignore the personal info under “A. Personalized Plan Search,” scroll down to B. and click the button under “General Plan Search” named “General Search.”

Type in and check the boxes as appropriate (in our case, “29575,” “Medigap without Drug Coverage” and “No” (eligible for state aid). Scroll down and click “Continue.”

On the new page, scroll down and click the button “Choose a drug plan type”

On the new page, scroll down to C. and click the button “Search for Medicare prescription Drug Plans.”

On new page, scroll down under A. and click the “View Plan List” button.

On the new page, scroll down to the bottom of the table with the five plans and next to “Plans per page,” click the down arrow. Highlight “All” and click it.

On the new page, click the button “Hide Plan List,”

Scroll down to B. and click the “Enter my medications” button.

On the new page, type in the name of a drug you will need (taking care with the spelling speeds things up). In our case, we entered “Crestor.” Click the button: “Search for Drug.”

If there is more than one drug name shown, click the precise drug name you want and click the button “Add selected drug to my list”

(A) Scroll up (rather than go to a new page) and type in another drug name. (In our case lisiniprol)

Click the button “Search for Drug”

If there is more than one drug name shown, click the precise drug name you want to highlight and click the button “Add selected drug to my list”

On the new page, your drug list will appear. If you want to list additional drugs, return to (A) and repeat the same steps to here. When you have a complete list of your drugs, click “Continue with Selected Drugs”

Scroll down to C. and click the button: “ Change/update my dose and quantity”

(B) If the default dosage on the new screen is satisfactory, click the button “Update Dosage Quantity.” Wait for the new screen. On the other hand if the default dosage is not satisfactory, click the down arrow next to a drug name, highlight the desired dosage and click it (in our case, for Crestor, 5Mg) – be sure and wait until a new page appears.

On the new page, type in the quantity per month (in our case, 15, because we split each pill) then click the button “Update Dosage Quantity.” Wait for the new screen.

On the new screen, return to (B) and continue to this point until the dosages and quantities for all your drugs are correctly listed, then under B., click the button “Continue with Selected Drugs” and on the changed screen, click the button “Select my preferred pharmacy.”

On the new screen, click “Continue to Pharmacy Selection”

If your favorite pharmacy(s) do not appear on the screen, there may be numbers of additional pages among which you may select by clicking another number.

If the original page or other number pages, still do not have your favorite pharmacy(s), scroll down to B. and click the down arrow to the right of the box entitled “Pharmacies within,” then highlight and click the distance that you are willing to travel and click the button “Find Pharmacies.”

When you are happy with the available selections, click the initially empty boxes next to the pharmacy(s) you most favor and click the button “Continue with selected pharmacies.”

A new page will appear, scroll down for the details of the costs of all available drug plans. The top plan gives the least annual cost for the group of prescriptions and dosages you have named. That is the one that I would choose.

Click the plan name that you choose.

A new page will appear that gives the cost associated with each pharmacy you have selected.

If you want to remove, add, or change the drug dosage, click the back button to the page showing all available drug plans and use the corresponding buttons as indicated at the page bottom.