There are accounts in the news today that a group of Republican legislators are starting to seriously talk about waiving the penalty for this first year. They’re probably still going to enforce the deadline, so if you don’t get in today, your next chance will be open enrollment Nov 15-Dec 31, and your coverage would start on Jan, 2007.

People who turn 65 during the year have an enrollment period of 3 months before and after the month they turn 65. The deadline is also waived for people qualifying for “extra help”, and for people who have equivalent or better coverage (”creditable coverage”) under some other medical plan.

Mostly you seem to be right on top of the curve, waiting for the confirmation to catch up.

When will the public insist that we get an affordable rational civilized (”socialist”) health care system that absorbs a defensible percentage of the GNP and distributes it equably? The stress of negotiating our present hellish maze is probably the reason Americans at all levels are twice as sick as the English!

Let the SOB’s penalize me. I’m no cowering idiot like so many Americans are today. Maybe if we seniors found our backbones and told the republicans where to put this plan they would reconsider it. PSHAW!

As Christy described, the “penalty” shows up in higher Medicare Part D premiums for those who sign-up for Medicare Part D after today.

No “penalty” is assesed against those who never sign up for Medicare Part D. SO for folks who keep their medi-gap insurance policies and never sign up with Part D, the penalty is not an issue.

[For folks earning under a very low income level ($14,000) or folks with severe mental health problems, the system may have more flexibility, but I think even these groups may be charged extra. Great - more money for the health insurance companies and big pharma from those withthe least.]

If the Congresspeople and Senators who knowingly designed this massive wealthtransfet to big pharma and the insurance/financial sectors ever seriously decide to improve public health, I suggest immediate organ donation would be appropriate atonement.

Unfortunately, their donations wouldn’t help cardiac patients. The COngressional authors of Medicare D are utterly heartless.

The first two links are aimed at the same page ( the first link is generic, the second is optimized for moziila/firefox).

http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/Public/Home

http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/…..ntegrate=N

The page links 1 and 2 reach is designed to allow people to plug in:

location
medications
personal info

and receive a list of drug plans covering their meds in their area, along with comparison pricing for the plans.

[The plans can still drop coverage of your meds after you have been withthem for sixty days]

THe third link is to a specific page on the Medicare Part D site. This Page allows drug/plan selction without personal or geographic data.

Link is: http://plancompare.medicare.gov/drugselect.asp

Apologies if this was already covered – I don’t see it in comments,but am glancing between pt visits.

Good luck with this horrific system….

I’m a physician working half-time in a public clinic serving mental health patients – back in November the county had the Medicare dog and pony show for the docs in the program roll out.

The Medicare people stated that patients who signed up for Medicare Plan D (the health plan) would lose their existing medi-gap policies. In other words, signing up for the partial drug benefit on Medicare D will cause people to lose through drug benefits (for people with the medigap plans offering such thorough coverage).

The Medicare people also stated that – with the creation of Plan D – the previously available thorough medigap plans would not be available for seniors who joined Plan D but then wanted to go back to their previous medigap policies.

In other words, the Medicare people told the county that signing up for Plan D permanently blocks access to a patinet’s prior medigap plans. If you’ve signed up for Part D and don’t like it, you don’t have the option of going back on your Medigap plan.

And, as observed above, the Part D plans can drop previously covered meds, but you’re stuck with the Part D plan until the annual re-enrollment. If you do change your Part D plan, the new plan can promise to cover certain meds and – after sixty days – break that promise, too.

The insurers and bigPharma negotiated a plan that works for them. Too bad the seniors’ needs weren’t reperesented at the table.

One family’s solution is just that, but – FWIW – I’ve asked my parents to continue their medigap via AARP.

I’m not surprised private insurers are threatening to cancel medigap policies – the medigap policies require a higher level of benefit than do the plans offered though Medicare Part D.

As the private insurers – along with the big pharma – were the chief players at the table when the Part D plan was devised, the coverage they agreed to offer under Part D is more lucrative for them than the existing thorough medi-gap policies.

I wonder if the California Insurance Commissioner has had complaints form seniors whose medigap carriers are threatening cancellation in order to push seniors to buy the Part D plans.

Good luck with this nightmare, and thanks to Christy for reminding folks about the Part D deadline today.

{apologies for haste/typos/redundancy – typed durig a cancelled pt visit. One of our indigent patients was randomly assigned to a Medicare D plan with a premium of 2,500 monthly….]