Too many hassles in new drug program

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The new Medicare drug plan literally can be the difference between life and death. So it’s frustrating that so many problems have cropped up as the new plan rolled out this year.

As the Journal Star reported this week, some Nebraskans who signed up for the new Medicare Part D program still are waiting for their prescription drug cards. They’re buying their prescriptions with cash and worrying about when and how they will receive reimbursement.

Similar problems have cropped up across the nation. People who have been receiving their prescription drugs through Medicaid at $1 per prescription have been told incorrectly that they now needed to pay a $250 deductible.

The deductible, however, does not apply to low-income seniors. The problem comes when computer records don’t flag a recipient as low-income.

Pharmacists not only have been overloaded with hundreds of changes in drug coverage, they also have been unable to get through to Medicare officials because phone lines are jammed. Some pharmacists have reported being put on hold for more than 30 minutes just to get an answer to one question.

Medicare officials held a teleconference Tuesday with hundreds of pharmacists across the country in an attempt to solve some of the problems.

Another problem is that some of the plans already are trying to enforce rules that require special permission for certain drugs or that require patients to try cheaper alternative medications. Those rules are not supposed to be enforced in the first 30 days of the program.

Some of the problems occurred because of the sheer enormity of the change. Hundreds of thousands of people waited until late December to sign up for the program. This made it difficult to update information in the Medicare system.

State officials in New Hampshire said the implementation of the new Medicare Part D program was a “disaster.” The state’s Legislature met in emergency session Tuesday to appropriate money to guarantee seniors a 10-day emergency supply of drugs. Similar measures were taken in other states.

Thus far, the new program has been fraught with entirely too many problems, starting with the erroneous initial cost estimate of $400 billion for the first 10 years. Ultimately the taxpayer cost may be twice that amount. Congress didn’t really know what it was getting into when it approved the program.

The program has frustrated millions of Americans who face a complicated array of choices they must make before the May 15 deadline. Answers are not easy to find. The Medicare Web site itself has more than 300 frequently asked questions.

Federal officials say that the problems are only temporary and that many problems will disappear as soon as computer systems catch up on the backlog of new information.

They had better be right. So far, the new program seems more like a hassle than a benefit.