Insurance Plans Marketing Medicare Rx Early
From The Chicago Tribune:
Although insurance companies are not allowed to offer specific details on their Medicare Part D (prescription drug benefit) plans until October 1, many companies are getting their name out early by offering “educational” information about the benefits. Some senior / consumer advocacy groups are unhappy about this.
“The companies are calling it educational outreach, but I call it premarketing because the health plans and pharmacies obviously are trying to get their foot in the door to attract the attention of the seniors,” said Lynda DeLaforgue, co-director of consumer group Citizen Action Illinois. “They want to plant that image of a Humana and a Wal-Mart into the minds of seniors. It goes to show you the amount of money that is going to be made off of this for the big insurers and the pharmacies.”
What does Wal-Mart have to do with this, you ask? Apparently big insurers and big pharmacy chains are striking deals across the board to cooperate in marketing these health plans to seniors. Humana has partnered up with Wal-Mart, UnitedHealth Group with Walgreens, and Aetna is developing deals with CVS and Rite-Aid.
To comply with the regulations for marketing medicare part d prescription drug plans, these insurers are only passing out materials that do not provide specific plan details. Some advocacy groups are upset that Humana and Wal-Mart are putting their logos on these materials. Rob Hitchcock from Humana explains:
“We have been encouraged by CMS [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] to do this . . . and a lot of times our representatives are side-by-side with representatives from the Social Security Administration,” said Rob Hitchcock, regional president for Humana’s Chicago-based Upper Midwest senior segment. “We have to put our logo on so seniors understand that it is Humana and not CMS.”
The bottom line here is that seniors are hungry for specific details about these plans: How much will they cost, what will the deductibles / copays be, and what drugs will be covered. Because they are beginning to be marketed to, yet can’t get this information, many of them are wary.
“They are trying to get people to sign up for something which basically has no writing on it yet,” said 83-year-old Sydney Bild of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. “Nobody knows exactly what drugs any given [plan] is going to cover. Seniors want to know whether the drugs they are on are going to be covered in any given plan and there is no way to know that because that negotiation has not been accomplished yet.”