Help at hand for poor patients' Medicare prescription drug costs

Doctors can refer low-income beneficiaries to State Health Insurance Assistance Programs if they need help applying.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. June 9, 2008.

Washington -- Physicians participating in recent focus groups on the Medicare drug benefit, for the most part, were unaware that their poorest patients might be eligible for additional government subsidies that could save those patients thousands of dollars each year.

The 13 focus groups featured physicians, beneficiaries and pharmacists. They were held last July and October in Richmond, Va.; Portland, Maine; and Denver. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to conduct the meetings. MedPAC delivered the report with the findings to Congress last month.

"Physicians generally do not know about the low-income subsidy for Part D or other help that is available for Medicare premiums and cost sharing," the researchers stated in the report. They noted that more pharmacists knew the extra help existed, but many did not bring up the income issue with Medicare customers because the pharmacists feared offending them.

Although the report is largely anecdotal, AARP Senior Legislative Representative Paul Cotton said it pointed to a very serious need to educate more doctors about the subsidies and to get physicians to start speaking about them with more patients. Patients in general say they have a high level of trust in their physicians, and doctors can use that trust to find "teachable moments" about this issue during office visits, he said.