LOS ANGELES — Medicare’s 3-year-old prescription drug plan has largely met its main goal of making lifesaving medicines more affordable for seniors, a new report finds.
The analysis by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation examined government data and past studies and found that for the most part, people who used to lack drug coverage saw their out-of-pocket costs drop after enrolling in the Medicare drug program.
The report, published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, provides the most comprehensive look yet at how Medicare consumers have fared since the program, called Medicare Part D, went into effect in 2006.
The program allows seniors and the disabled enrolled in Medicare to join a private drug plan that is approved and subsidized by the federal government. The benefit is widely hailed as the biggest expansion to Medicare since it was signed into law in 1965.
Before Medicare Part D, only two-thirds of beneficiaries had drug coverage. That forced many with diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic illnesses to stop filling prescriptions or skimp on their doses, according to various surveys.
Today, 90 percent — or about 41 million — have drug coverage. Of those, about 27 million are enrolled in Medicare Part D. The rest are retirees who get coverage from former employers or through the military.
Government spending on the Medicare drug benefit has also been lower than expected and is one of the rare federal programs to come in under budget. The program cost $40 billion in 2007, less than the projected $66 billion, the report said.
Jonathan Oberlander, a health politics expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, called Part D a “mixed success.”
But seniors do not always pick the cheapest plan despite having many choices, the report found.
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