Medicare Study: Half of seniors won't see an advantage in 2006

Medicare drug benefit shorts some
Study: Half of seniors won't see an advantage in 2006
By Kristen Gerencher, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 8:19 PM ET Dec. 1, 2003


SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- As many as half of Americans 65 and older won't get any bang for their new Medicare drug-benefit buck when it becomes available, according to a recent study.

Seniors who spend $810 or less a year on prescription drugs won't see an advantage for joining the new Medicare drug benefit known as Part D when it begins in 2006, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group.

The $810 is the threshold at which out-of-pocket payments outside the plan match the premium, deductible and first level of coverage set up in the plan, which is the situation about half of seniors find themselves in, EPI economist Elise Gould said.

The biggest expansion to Medicare in its 38-year history, approved by the Senate last week, won't lift the financial burden for such patients, she said.

"For $810 worth of drug purchases, you're spending $810 out of your own pocket," Gould said. "If you're below that point, you're going to spend more money than if you would've gone out and bought them yourself."

snip

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/print_story.asp?print=1&guid={9B6195D5-F23F-4312-831C-4904A95DB808}&siteid=mktw

nice move AARP....

and she will see a BIG zero from this program. The only people who will gain are The Insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.:puke:

We have insurance from our previous employers which will translate into Medigap insurance which we pay for. It was something we were promised at retirement. We pay for it.

Now the companies that do this will get paid twice....once by us, and again subsidized by the government. When the government gets tired of putting out that 88 million a year, then they will drop us.

We are the losers.

royally screwed by the new" madicare"... Between my wife and I we take 11 medicines. Most are now partially covered by medicaid. According to what we are being told we will lose the medicaid in 06 and will have to either join the part d or pay for all of it ourselves. Before we will go to part d we will import our meds from Canada. ;(

part of the new bill says you can't get your meds from Canada.

This bill that was passed is only a farce for Bush to go on TV and talk about how much he cares about seniors and so many people will believe him. We've already written our first letter to the editor to spread the truth about this bill which was only passed for his reelection!

getting your drugs from Canada? A fine? How are they going to get a fine out of someone who is eating dog food because he doesn't have any money? Imprisonment? Well, if they put the senior citizen in jail, the government will have to provide medication for that individual while he is in jail, so..... ummmm, again, I ask, what is the punishment going to be?

I live up here in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, this crap about not being able to go to Canada for prescriptions is a huge issue here on the border!

If the Pugs like it, it's fucked up!

So if you bills are smaller/larger you receive little or no benefit....meanwhile drug companies make out all day.

the "benefits" do not start to many are safely out of office. This sham should never have even been voted on until the details were released, but then again thats how the rethugs operate (behind closed doors in the dead of night). To think they had some Democratic "assistance" makes me totally disgusted, why does the Democratic party have SO many sellouts and traitors in it?

Because both parties are owned by the same corporations. The fact that so many dems voted AGAINST this madness is what is truly suprising. They bit the hand that feeds them.

Federal financing of all elections is the only thing that can save the country. And it may be too late for that now.