The Cost of Medications: Seniors may be taking it on the chin!

South Lake Tahoe, CA Market Statistics

This Associated Press article distresses us. It’s not fair that seniors should pay to much… for anything.

Here’s a few of the article’s bullet points (but do read it in its entirety here)

Seniors have until the end of the year to switch Medicare drug plans to get a better deal.

Many will pass up the chance to save hundreds of dollars a year in prescription costs. The reason: Dozens of drug plans on the market are overwhelming and confusing.

The average premium for a Medicare drug plan will increase by 11 percent in 2010.

An average of 7 percent of the 17 million seniors on Medicare drug plans switch plans each year. Experts on Medicare say this suggests that millions of beneficiaries could be paying more than they should for their drug coverage.

The Medicare drug benefit was created by Congress in 2003 to help those seniors – one in four at the time – who didn’t have prescription-drug coverage.

Rather than giving all seniors the same coverage, Congress decided to have private companies offer the benefit through competing plans. As a result, insurers offer different levels of coverage for different drugs.

Some experts say the competition has held down costs, but some seniors – and their children – say the wide array of plans can be daunting, making it unnerving or too perplexing to change.

The open season for selecting or changing plans began Nov. 15 and ends Dec. 31. (For details, go to www.cms.hhs.gov/center/open enrollment.asp.)

(full article here)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 7:07 am and is filed under For Buyers, For Sellers, Lake Tahoe Real Estate, National real estate news, South Lake Tahoe, CA, Stateline, NV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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