Warning: Medicare Plan Finder
Story and following information found at The LA Times:
I was defeated by the new Medicare drug program.
The weapon used against me was Medicare’s “plan finder,” a website that churns out a list of private Medicare drug plans, along with their estimated annual costs, based on the prescriptions the user types in. The website then prompts the user to enroll in the plan that best suits his or her medical and financial profile.
Unfortunately, the system is burdened by numerous peculiarities and complexities that render it almost useless for millions of potential beneficiaries. The most serious drawback is the one that snagged me: While the program bases its calculations of prescription costs on a “30-day supply” of each drug, for those taken orally it assumes that a 30-day supply is 30 pills.
But many medications aren’t taken once a day. Unless the user manually overrides the 30-pill default, the result can be wildly misleading.
When I tested the system for a column last month, I typed in Actonel, an osteoporosis drug commonly prescribed for patients over 65. Actonel is taken once a week. Therefore, the 30-pill default overestimated its monthly cost sevenfold, hopelessly contaminating the results. How hopelessly? Of the 48 health plans available to California residents, the one it ranked as the least expensive was really the 37th most expensive when the correct dosage was entered. Any unassuming or inexperienced customer therefore risked being steered to the wrong plan.
This glitch isn’t exactly a secret. Medicare authorities were alerted to it in November by drug manufacturers concerned that it could make their products seem unaffordable. (The error also understates the cost of a medication taken several times a day, such as many diabetes treatments. That could steer beneficiaries to the wrong plans, too.) In response, Medicare’s web designers added a note prompting users to double-check the quantities of their pills when entering prescriptions. But the notice can be easily overlooked amid all the other verbiage cluttering the screen — especially by people navigating the system for the first time.
Seeing as though the website is designed to be a prime source of information for seniors eligible for medicare, this problem in the system could prove to be very costly to those who choose the wrong plan due to the glitch.