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| Part D |
January 27, 2006 |
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Dear Friends,
The crowd came slowly at the Taylor Ranch Community Center for the Medicare Part D Health Fair on Thursday afternoon. Some were there to get information for themselves, others for parents or friends.
We`ve been monitoring the implementation of Medicare Part D since January 1. The first week had a lot of transition and start up problems.
That was frustrating for patients and pharmacists alike. The biggest problem was people shifted from Medicaid to Medicare late in December, with notifications of coverage stuck in the Christmas mail.
Now, as a Mom who is used to kids announcing their big project is due tomorrow and they need to start it, it`s not as though I`m unfamiliar with this behavior. But it still bugs me when they had two years to make sure the state-federal hand off was greased.
The good news is that week two was much better than week one and, when I visited a call center taking customer service calls last week the calls were very low. At our local pharmacies -- not the big chains that have all the computer systems -- I learned that this week is even smoother.
The other good news is that seniors are signing up for this voluntary benefit. Medicare is filling about one million prescriptions a day nationwide. In New Mexico as of Wednesday, 69 percent of seniors have prescription drug coverage.
Medicare part D sign ups were running about 20,000 a day in late December, and during the first days of this week 35,000 to 50,000 signed up each day. People have gathered lots of information at seminars and forums and through the mail. Now they are making their decisions and signing up.
Seniors have until May 15 to sign up for coverage without any penalty. At the Taylor Ranch community center on Thursday they were asking good questions, and making progress.
Good to be home,
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