Tag: AHIP

Website Errors Raise Calls For Medicare To Be Flexible With Seniors’ Enrollment

Seniors will be able to change plans any time next year if they discover their coverage doesn’t provide what the government’s Plan Finder promised. 

By Susan Jaffe  | Kaiser Health News | December 6, 2019 | This article also ran on

Saturday is the deadline for most people with Medicare coverage to sign up for private drug and medical plans for next year. But members of Congress, health care advocates and insurance agents worry that enrollment decisions based on bad information from the government’s revamped, error-prone Plan Finder website will bring unwelcome surprises.

Beneficiaries could be stuck in plans that cost too much and don’t meet their medical needs — with no way out until 2021.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told Kaiser Health News that beneficiaries would be able to change plans next year because of Plan Finder misinformation, although officials provided few details. [Continued at Kaiser Health News or NPR.]   …

US lawmakers seek cuts in prescription drug prices

 Volume 393, Number 10175      

 9 March 2019       

 

WORLD REPORT   A committee brought together Senators and drug company representatives to discuss why drug pricing in the USA is so high, but little progress was made, Susan Jaffe reports.

A much-publicized Trump Administration proposal allows — not requires —  pharmaceutical companies to pass large rebates on to Medicare patients. Savings as much as 30 percent for seniors depend on companies’ voluntarily cutting prices but several top drug makers tell Senate committee they can’t promise to do so. [Continued here.]
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Looking For Lower Medicare Drug Costs? Ask Your Pharmacist For The Cash Price.

Sometimes a drug plan’s copay is higher than the cash, but insurers’ “gag orders” keep pharmacists from telling Medicare beneficiaries. A little-known Medicare rule requires pharmacists to divulge the lower cash price if patients ask.

By Susan Jaffe  | Kaiser Health News | May 30, 2018 | This KHN story also ran on 

As part of President Donald Trump’s blueprint to bring down prescription costs, Medicare officials have warned insurers that “gag orders” 

Scott Olson/Getty Images

keeping pharmacists from alerting seniors that they could save money by paying cash — rather than using their insurance — are “unacceptable and contrary” to the government’s effort to promote price transparency.

But the agency stopped short of requiring insurers to lift such restrictions on pharmacists.

That doesn’t mean people with Medicare drug coverage are destined to overpay for prescriptions. Under a little-known Medicare rule, they can pay a lower cash price for prescriptions instead of using their insurance. But first, they must ask the pharmacist about that option…. [Continued at Kaiser Health News, NPR and CNN Money]…