Questions from your patients about the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit may begin cropping up soon. That's because CMS was to have begun sending letters on the topic to millions of Medicare beneficiaries at the end of May, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Citing an article in The New York Times, the May 23 Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report said about 20 million CMS letters mailed to beneficiaries May 27 would ask recipients to complete a five-page application designed to identify whether they qualified for additional prescription assistance under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003.
The Social Security Administration has hired 2,200 employees to staff 1,300 local offices to help answer application questions.
A second mailing, scheduled for May 31, advised another 10 million beneficiaries that they automatically qualify for the new drug benefit.
Each of the letters will arrive some five months before the Nov. 15 deadline for selecting a drug plan under Part D. The benefit will begin Jan. 1, 2006. You can read more about the Part D benefit at "Prescription Drug and Other Assistance Programs" on the Medicare.gov Web site.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, patient advocates expressed concern that a five-month lag time between the application/notification letters and the November deadline for actually selecting a drug plan "could cause many people to forget the November enrollment requirement."
In the meantime, CMS is revising its 106-page preliminary draft of the Part D handbook. The original publication had been criticized by insurers, lawmakers, insurance regulators and health policy experts because it failed to mention the gap in coverage that occurs between $2,250 and $5,100 in out-of-pocket prescription costs, the rule saying that beneficiaries may have to appeal to receive coverage for certain drugs, and the differences between traditional fee-for-service Medicare and private Medicare Advantage plans.
The final handbook should be ready for distribution in the fall.
