Medicare Open Enrollment – Make Your Choices By December 7th

It’s that time of year again - Medicare’s open enrollment period started earlier this year (October 15th) and ends on December 7th. If you or a family member is 65 or older, you have less than a month to make any changes, so be sure to review your options and make selections before the deadline hits.

Even if you are satisfied with your coverage plan, I highly recommend that you still review all the options available to you. While you choices may look the same as previous years, you’ll want to note the rate changes for 2012 and make sure that the options still fit your needs and your budget.

Open enrollment is the only time of the year that you can make changes (unless you experience a qualifying ‘event’ that would allow you to update your plan).

Like many private insurance programs, basic Medicare does not pay for all of your health care costs. You are responsible for paying premiums, covering deductibles, and handling coinsurance or copayments. Basic Medicare services – both Parts A and B – do not pay for long-term care or extended stays in skilled nursing or assisted living facilities. Basic Medicare also only pays for about 20% of your doctor’s charges, so if you are under the standard Medicare plan, you probably want to buy supplemental health insurance to give you adequate coverage and help out with deductibles.

While Medicare can seem a little confusing – especially if you are new to the program, there are really just two main options involved, plus the coverage for prescription drugs. Medicare programs work like an HMO, run by private companies.

Your main choices are whether or not to go with basic (also called ‘original’) Medicare or with a Medicare Advantage Plan. The Medicare Advantage Plan gives you additional services, including a standard prescription drug plan. You can also enroll in a Medicare Part D prescription plan as an alternative.

If you need assistance, you can contact Medicare directly to ask questions. You can also visit the Medicare open enrollment Web site at http://medicare.gov/open-enrollment/index. You’ll find that the Web site does a good job of explaining options and answering frequently asked questions.

Don’t wait too long! Just as the holidays are almost upon us, don’t let December 7th come and go with reviewing all of your health care coverage options.

Medication Management for Seniors – The Impact on Society of Med Noncompliance

According to PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), more than 75% of adult Americans who take three or more medicines daily are non-compliant with taking their medications properly. More than half of our seniors who take multiple medications (and one in four of them take 10-19 mediations each day) either forget to take the correct dose or fail in some other manner to take the right medication. While we can see for ourselves the impact this can have on our loved ones, did you know that the economic impact to our society is in excess of $100 billion each year?

Medication non-compliance puts even more stress on an already over-burdened healthcare system, adding to the costs of healthcare and contributing to steadily rising insurance costs. It stretches our Medicare and Medicaid resources, and the demand causes even more shortages of healthcare professionals.

Wow. And it’s not just the dollars and cents – medication non-compliance kills more of our seniors every year than accidents, flu and pneumonia combined – it’s the leading cause of death of senior citizens in America.

Reasons from forgetfulness to fear of drugs and the high cost of prescriptions all lend to seniors not taking medications correctly.
What can we do? First, if we have an elderly family member, we should take extra precautions to make sure that they fill the right prescriptions and take both over-the-counter and prescription meds as directed. We may need to accompany them to doctor’s visits, engage a caregiver, or purchase medical alert systems that help with reminders and dosages.

We should also get involved with our neighbors – a simple welfare check every now and then on an elderly neighbor could mean a world of difference in making sure their loved ones or physicians are aware of any problems they are having with medications.

With such a systemic problem, we all have a certain responsibility to make sure that family members, friends and neighbors are educated in where to find help for taking medications properly. Many studies show that people who live alone are more likely to have problems with taking their medications as they should. We should all take more notice of our elderly neighbors who are by themselves.

Medication non-compliance is so widespread that it will take all of us to help solve the issues involved – not just the medical or care-giving communities. A study by PhRMA found that patients who regularly took their medications as prescribed significantly reduced their total health care spending and lowered the number of emergency room visits and the number of days a patient spent in the hospital.

If you have concerns about an older adult’s willingness or ability to take the right medications, speak up and let the people who care for them know. If your own family member is having a hard time taking their medications, take steps through technology or the family doctor to create a routine that will help your loved ones stay compliant with the doctor’s orders. It helps each and every one of us!