MARYSVILLE – The total for Lorraine Cronk’s prescription lit up in digital blue numerals on the pharmacy cash register: $12.91.
That probably doesn’t sound too bad. But if everything had worked as planned under the new Medicare prescription drug plan, Cronk’s bill would have been $1, said Charlie Bishop, her longtime pharmacist at Quil Ceda Pharmacy. Kevin Nortz / The Herald
He offered to let the bill lag for a while, assuming the paperwork snafu that caused her to be charged more would soon be unsnarled. “We appreciate your loyalty,” he said.
Cronk reached for her checkbook. “I don’t like to leave a bill hanging,” she said.
Cronk, 80, said she lives on food stamps and a Social Security paycheck of about $700 a month. She qualified for additional low-income discounts under the new Medicare prescription drug plan.
Like an estimated 8,000 other people in Snohomish County, she previously received her medications free through a Medicaid program for low-income people, the elderly and disabled.
The government automatically enrolled people on the Medicaid plan into Medicare’s new prescription plan. Cronk and other seniors have reported problems getting medications, or not getting the low-income discounts they were expecting.
An estimated 80 percent of the reported problems when the program kicked off in January were with people switching from Medicaid to Medicare, said James Pham, a coordinator with Snohomish County’s Senior Information and Assistance.
Under the new Medicare plan, Cronk was supposed to pay $1 for generic drugs and $3 for name-brand drugs. Monthly premiums that some other seniors pay were waived.
With 10 medications, even the small co-pays could be a stretch, she said.
“There has to be people taking their grocery money to get medications now,” said Cronk, a member of Snohomish County’s Council on Aging.
“That’s sad. If you’re real low-income, people don’t understand that $5 can really mean something.”
Cronk thought she had briefed herself well on the changes in how she would get her medications. She checked out the plans and found they didn’t cover her medications or didn’t include Quil Ceda Pharmacy.
She thought she had changed to one that did. She has the paperwork to show she made the change, dated Nov. 29. Then she got a letter dated Dec. 1 saying she had been enrolled in a different plan, the one initially offered by the government.
Cronk admits she didn’t closely examine the new plastic prescription drug card when it came in the mail. She simply set it aside until early January, when she needed a prescription.
When a computer check in Bishop’s pharmacy alerted them that she wasn’t enrolled in the plan she wanted, “you could have knocked me down with a feather,” Cronk said.
“I spent two lousy days on the phone trying to make sense of this,” she said. Cronk ended up paying for extra pills to last her into this month, when she hopes the problem will be fixed.
Pham said many seniors have had difficulties accessing their medications. “Medicare is working on it. We’re dealing with a very vulnerable population.”
Some volunteers at Senior Information and Assistance got phone calls from people worried that they would run out of medication or would die without them, Pham said. “Those calls have gone down,” he added.
Now, there are procedures in place for contacting the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in an emergency.
“They have been helping us through the storm,” Pham said. “It really is a storm that we’re both in.”
Confusion continues, not just among seniors but with the plans themselves, the federal agency that coordinates the program and at pharmacies, said Shirley Hauck, a Medicare prescription drug specialist with Senior Services of Snohomish County.
“We understand it’s a transition period,” Pham said. “It’s a big, complex program, like moving an elephant through a needle.”
Teri Ferreria, director of retail pharmacy for The Everett Clinic, said the kickoff of the program in January “was brutal.”
One patient came to the pharmacy almost in tears, she said. He had brought a copy of a Web page with him that said his medications should cost $30. But the bill was twice that.
The next worry was whether another wave of problems will be triggered this month, when people who were given 30 days of medications to get through the transition period run out, she said.
Things are beginning to get better as pharmacies work with the prescription plans to figure out problems, Bishop said.
“I do have people who were paying $600 a month who are now paying $100,” he said. “It’s not all negative.”
Hauck added: “There’s hope for the future. I think February will be better than January, and maybe, by the end of March, we’ll be doing pretty well.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
Comments sought
Senior Information and Assistance would like to get written comments from seniors on Medicare’s new prescription drug program. They would like to know if there were problems enrolling in the plan and, if so, if they have been resolved. They’d like to hear from people who didn’t have problems as well.
Send comments to to Senior Information and Assistance, 8221 44th Ave. W., Suite E, Mukilteo, WA 98275.
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