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Medicare's Drug Benefit Tough to Navigate
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 Robert Hayes is president of the Medicare Rights Center in New York City, a consumer watchdog group. He said these types of incidents are still all too common for Part D participants.
"The key message here is that the variety of plans confounds people's ability to get the drugs that they need," Hayes said. "Very often, people leave the doctor's office with a prescription that they cannot and do not fill."
The solution, he said, lies in a renewed commitment by Medicare to streamline drug-coverage information for both doctors and patients.
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"In three words: Simplify, simplify, simplify," Hayes said. "With the amount of money that we are putting into this program, people in Medicare and the American taxpayer should be getting far better health care. That's the frustration."
Tseng agreed. "Ideally, we should be making this all very easily accessible," she said. "Part D benefits provide a lot of coverage for people who didn't have it before. We're just saying, let's find a way to help providers find out what's actually covered and paid for by Part D."
More information
There's much more on navigating Part D at Medicare.
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Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 6/19/2007
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SOURCES: Chien-Wen Tseng, M.D., M.P.H., Pacific Health Research Institute, and generalist physician faculty scholar, department of medicine and community health, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu; Robert Hayes, president, Medicare Rights Center, New York City; June 20, 2007, Journal of the American Medical Association
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