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Friday Alert
Friday, August 22, 2008(Alliance for Retired Americans)
Medicare Beneficiaries Face 12
Percent Hike in 2009 Drug
Premiums
According to a report by
the Associated Press, the average Medicare Part
D beneficiary will face a 12% monthly premium
increase in 2009. Federal government
projections show the cost of standard drug
coverage rising $3, to $28 each month.
The estimate was based on bids from the private
insurance companies administering the plans,
and the increase is due largely to higher drug
costs and a larger number of prescriptions per
person, according to Medicare officials.
About 17.4 million people are enrolled in Part
D plans offering only prescription drug
coverage, while an additional 7.6 million pay
for ones with more comprehensive health
benefits. “If you are a retiree on a
fixed income facing difficult times, you are
not alone,” said Edward F.
Coyle, Executive Director of the
Alliance. “Higher gas prices, higher
health care costs, and lower returns on
investments are creating a real crunch for many
seniors.”
Major Victory for Raytheon Retirees
As Court Orders Health Benefits
Restored
Retirees of Raytheon
Missile Systems scored a major victory
recently, as a U.S. District Court in Arizona
ordered the company to restore health care
benefits to them and their dependents.
The ruling came on a class action lawsuit filed
by International Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local 933 on behalf of
all IAM retirees who have worked at Raytheon
since 1990, after they found health benefits
slashed. In a case which will set legal
precedent for other workers whose benefits are
unilaterally terminated by their employers, the
corporation must do more than recommence
coverage for employees who were eligible under
collective bargaining agreements made between
1990 and 1999. It must also reimburse the
hundreds of retirees who were forced to pay
premiums out of pocket while the lawsuit was
pending. “This is not just a victory for
Raytheon employees, but for all retirees,” said
George J. Kourpias, President
of the Alliance for Retired Americans and
former President of the IAM. “When
workers fight for fair agreements and make
sacrifices to continue receiving these benefits
into retirement, they deserve the affordable
health care they have been promised.”
New Study Examines Impact of
Doughnut Hole in 2007
A new report
by the Kaiser Family Foundation quantifies the
number of Medicare Part D plan enrollees who
reached the “doughnut hole,” the gap in their
prescription drug coverage, in 2007. The study
of Part D prescription drug utilization found
that 26% of Part D enrollees who filled any
prescriptions in 2007 reached the gap.
This includes 22% who stayed in the gap for the
remainder of the year, and 4% who ultimately
received catastrophic coverage. Applying
this estimate to the entire population of Part
D enrollees, the analysis suggests that about
3.4 million beneficiaries, or 14% of all Part D
enrollees, reached the coverage gap and faced
the full cost of their prescriptions in
2007. Conducted by researchers at
Georgetown University, the University of
Chicago and Kaiser, the study found evidence of
patients changing their use of prescription
drugs when they were in the coverage gap.
Across eight classes of drugs examined, 15% of
Part D enrollees who reached the gap stopped
their drug therapy for that condition, 5%
switched to another medication in the class,
and 1% reduced the number of drugs they were
taking in the class. The standard Part D
benefit in 2008 has a $275 deductible and 25%
coinsurance, up to an initial coverage limit of
$2,510 in total drug costs, followed by a
coverage gap where enrollees pay all of the
next $3,216 in drug costs. After reaching
that limit, beneficiaries pay 5% of any
additional drug costs. For 2007, these
amounts were slightly lower. The study
also found that people who reached the gap paid
the full cost of their medications, without any
help from their Part D plan, for an average of
just over four months, and received
catastrophic coverage for less than one
month. The study analyzed retail pharmacy
claims data, based on 4.5 million Medicare
beneficiaries in Part D plans in 2007, the
first year that most people were enrolled in a
Part D plan for a full calendar year. The
report, The Medicare Part D Coverage Gap:
Costs and Consequences in 2007, is
available online at http://www.retiredamericans.org/
. “If Medicare were able to use its
negotiating power to strike a better deal with
drug companies, not nearly as many people would
be in the doughnut hole,” said Ruben
Burks, Secretary-Treasurer of the
Alliance.
Simulating Age
85
The New York Times
reported earlier this month on “Xtreme Aging,”
a training program designed to simulate the
diminished abilities associated with growing
older. As part of the training,
participants put on distorting glasses to blur
their vision; stuffed cotton balls in their
ears to reduce hearing, as well as in their
noses to dampen their sense of smell; and put
on latex gloves with adhesive bands around the
knuckles to impede their manual
dexterity. They also put kernels of corn
in their shoes to approximate the aches that
come from losing fatty tissue. They had
become “virtual members” of the 5.3 million
Americans age 85 and older, the nation’s
fastest-growing age group - the people the
trainees work with every day. The
training group then went through a series of
routine tasks, including buttoning a shirt,
finding a number in a telephone book, dialing a
cell phone, and folding and unfolding a
map. The result was “a domestic obstacle
course” - some tasks were difficult, some
impossible. The type in the telephone
book appeared microscopic, the buttons on the
cell phone even smaller. Refolding the
map and handling the coins were found to be
extremely difficult. Macklin
Intergenerational Institute in Findlay, Ohio
developed Xtreme Aging as a sensitivity
training program for schools, churches,
workplaces and other groups that have contact
with older people. As the population in
the developing world ages, simulation programs
like Xtreme Aging have become a regular part of
many nursing or medical school curriculums, and
have moved into the corporate world, where
knowing what it is like to grow older
increasingly means better understanding one’s
customers and employees. The simulation
is not quite like the aging process,
however. As people get older, they lose
their abilities slowly, and compensate by
adjusting their behavior.
Did You Know…
The number
of those age 85 and older is expected to more
than triple, from 5.4 million in 2008 to 19
million, by 2050 (CNN).
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