Category: Drugs
Medicare drug plan backfires on states
Seniors’ switch from Medicaid will boost costs by millions
By Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Reporter | March 9, 2005
The Medicare prescription drug benefit is backfiring on states–run
ning up millions of dollars in extra drug bills instead of the savings promised by its Republican supporters. [Continued here ]…
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Switch to Medicare to cost state millions
By Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Reporter | October 20, 2005
Ohio’s financially strapped Medicaid program will pay millions more when low-income seniors switch to Medicare for their prescription drugs next year. The federal law that established the new Medicare drug benefit requires the nearly 200,000 seniors in Medicaid – the state health-care program for low-income people – to transfer to Medicare for drug coverage. The law also says that states must reimburse the federal government for 90 percent of those seniors’ drug costs. But any savings that states expected have vanished because of the controversial formula Medicare used to figure how much they owe. The switch will cost Ohio $35 million more in 2007 than if the seniors now in Medicaid had stayed there. [Continued here.]
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Medicare dangles Rx carrot
By Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Reporter | February 12, 2005
Many of the nation’s major corporations providing retiree drug coverage will get help paying the bill – subsidies worth several billion dollars a year from federal taxpayers. The money totals roughly $71 billion tax-free through 2013 and is part of the Medicare Modernization Act, which added a drug benefit to Medicare. It is aimed at encouraging employers to maintain their coverage instead of forcing retirees onto Medicare’s tab. [Continued here]