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Seniors
scramble to defray drug costs Needham
Tab,
August 21, 2003
Before she had her stroke seven months ago, Needham resident Lucille Noonan didn't have much of a need for medication. Since then, prescription drugs have eaten up a larger chunk of her monthly budget than ever before. She's explored a variety of options to help pay for them, and has even experimented with buying drugs from Canada. "That worked out well," Noonan said. She is currently looking into signing up for Prescription Advantage, the state program that helps seniors age 66 and older, and some disabled and low-income people, defray the cost of prescription drugs. "If this hadn't come up, I would have continued [buying drugs from Canada]," she said. The deadline for signing up for Prescription Advantage is the end of August, with a few exceptions for those between ages 65 and 66, and those who have recently moved to Massachusetts, involuntarily lost their health coverage or recently become ineligible for Medicaid. Earlier this week, Noonan was one of more than two dozen concerned seniors from Needham and surrounding communities who crowded a Council on Aging meeting room for a last-minute information session on the program. Ken Levy, director of MetroWest Regional SHINE, a health insurance counseling program, ran the information session. He urged seniors to figure out as soon as possible whether Prescription Advantage is for them and to send in the application form even if they did not have all the required supplemental information readily available. "It's more important to get the application in on time than it is to send in the documentation," Levy stressed. The open enrollment period for Prescription Advantage is just one month long this year, but just a few months ago, it appeared as if there would be no Prescription Advantage program at all. Lacking adequate federal assistance, Gov. Mitt Romney cut $10 million from the program, and Prescription Advantage closed to new members as of Feb. 1. Since then, the Legislature has restored Prescription Advantage, but the program remains as volatile as ever and could once again close to new members. "There's no guarantee that they're going to go back to their regular pattern," Levy said. He added, "I can't promise you that this program is going to be around for the next 15 years." While the state's fiscal crisis, and the tugs of war that went on in the State House over the last few months, almost left without drug coverage, a group of seniors who had switched to less expensive health insurance in hopes of supplementing it with Prescription Advantage, many were never aware of how endangered the program was. "We're more concerned than they are," said Florence Schumacher, a volunteer SHINE counselor who was among those who helped Levy with the information session. Like Noonan, many of those who attended Monday's session were considering Prescription Advantage for the first time, as they watched their health insurance costs skyrocket. Sheila Clark, 74, of Needham Heights, recently noticed that she was paying $27 for prescriptions that used to cost her just $15, and the number of different drugs she had to take kept on increasing. "As women over age 65, we're encouraged to take all these other drugs to help our cartilage and our bones," she said. "That adds to expenses." Copyright ©
2002 Global Action on Aging
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