For older Americans
navigating the thicket of drug insurance plans offered under Medicare, there’s
been one online tool they’ve turned to the most: a link that lets them quickly
calculate the total cost of each plan for their specific medications and
circumstances.
But late last month,
when Medicare unveiled a revamp of its website for Part D, the prescription
drug benefit, that feature was omitted, sparking an outcry from senior
advocates, brokers, and volunteers who help enrollees sift through the options.
Federal officials are
now racing against an Oct. 15 deadline to fix the flaw in their redesign —
reinstating a function enabling total-cost comparisons in competing plans —
before tens of millions of Medicare beneficiaries log in to select the cheapest
drug plans for the coming year.
At issue is an
upgrade of the online tool called Medicare Plan Finder, the most commonly used
feature on the Medicare website for seniors searching for affordable insurance
coverage for their medicines. The legacy plan finder allowed individuals or
their advisers to enter the names and dosages of the drugs they take and
quickly calculate which of the multiple Part D policies available in their
region and pharmacy carries the lowest annual out-of-pocket costs.
But that total-cost
calculator is missing in the redesigned Medicare plan finder, which went live
on Medicare’s website on Aug. 27 in advance of the annual open enrollment
period that starts next month. Instead, the new plan finder enables users to
tally separately the costs of premiums, deductibles, and co-pays under
different plans — but not the total cost of each one. That makes it much harder
for seniors to compare plans and choose the cheapest.
“This needs to be
fixed,” said Ann Kayrish, senior program manager for Medicare at the National
Council on Aging, one of many parties that have inundated Medicare officials
with feedback since it released its new version. “It’s alarming that the most
used and useful sorting tool isn’t in their new iteration. We’re keeping the
pressure on.”
Julie Jennings, a broker
at the Sylvia Group in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Dartmouth, said
she uses the plan finder’s total-cost calculator at least two or three times a
week to help clients entering retirement to transition from their employer’s
insurance to Medicare drug plans. “We just put in all the meds and get the
total rates,” she said. “I could do the math if I needed to. But it would be
difficult for the average consumer to add it all up.”
In a Web conference
with Medicare counselors on Thursday, officials from the agency that
administers Medicare acknowledged the criticism they’ve received on the absence
of a total-cost calculator and said they were working to add that function in
time for the open enrollment period. That period, running from Oct. 15 through
Dec. 7, is when millions of newly enrolled and existing beneficiaries shop for
the cheapest drug policies, which often change year to year.
Representatives from
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said their new plan finder — the
first big update to the tool in a decade — “was designed to be simple and
intuitive” for nearly 45 million Medicare beneficiaries. They said it offers
many advantages over the current tool, including easier use on mobile devices
like tablets and smart phones, and a feature alerting users to lower-priced
generic versions of their prescription meds.
“The redesigned
Medicare Plan Finder is another example of how CMS is empowering beneficiaries
with price and quality information to take advantage of lower rates and new benefits,”
CMS administrator Seema Verma said in a statement last month.
In prepared responses
to questions from The Boston Globe, the CMS representatives said the total-cost
calculator “is a feature that has always been on our list to include, but
couldn’t be completed in time for the Aug. 27 public launch.” They said they
received feedback on the plan finder revamp from “stakeholder groups” and
shared prototypes with some Medicare beneficiaries.
The legacy plan
finder will remain on Medicare’s website alongside the new one until the end of
this month, they said, enabling users to get used to the new one.
CMS officials
declined to be interviewed about the process and rollout.
Justin Lubenow,
executive vice president at the Moorestown, N.J., insurance brokerage firm
Senior Advisors, called the plan finder upgrade “a poor technology with good
intentions.” But if its flaw isn’t corrected, he warned, “the government’s
going to get slammed by phone calls during open enrollment. This is
significantly less useful without the total cost” function.
The absence of a
total cost-calculator is one of a number of concerns a range of critics have
expressed about recent Medicare policy changes.
Some suggest a new
requirement that beneficiaries shopping for a new plan set up an online
My.Medicare account to store their medication lists could potentially
compromise privacy. They also pointed out that many older and poorer Medicare
beneficiaries may not have access to a computer and would need help creating
online accounts.
In a letter to
Medicare administrator Verma late last month, four advocacy groups — the Center
for Medicare Advocacy, Justice in Aging, Medicare Rights Center, and National
Council on Aging — also raised a host of questions about the process
surrounding the new plan finder and whether federal officials will have enough
time to incorporate feedback before open enrollment.
The plan finder
upgrade has emerged as a bugaboo for counselors at free state Medicare
assistance programs operated out of senior centers across the country. (In
Massachusetts, the program is called SHINE, an acronym for Serving the Health
Insurance Needs of Everyone.) The advisers worry that any delay in adding the
total-cost feature to the new tool will greatly add to the time it takes them
to assist beneficiaries, limiting the number of people they can help.
“This new plan finder
makes it more complicated and time-consuming for people like myself,” said
Howard Houghton, a volunteer at the state health insurance assistance program
in Harrisonburg, Va. “The total cost is what people need to know so they can
budget.”
Robert Weisman can be
reached at robert.weisman@globe.com. Follow him on
Twitter @GlobeRobW.
No comments:
Post a Comment