Medicare-PartD.com now offers two new features for Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare support groups. As many people know, seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries can enroll in a new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan starting Thursday, November 15 and continuing until Monday, December 31, 2007 – with prescription drug coverage beginning January 1, 2008. However, the Medicare-PartD.com staff cautions people not to rush into a prescription drug plan decision and to consider December 8th as an enrollment goal to ensure coverage at the beginning of 2008. To assist with the 2008 Medicare Part D prescription drug plan choice, the Medicare-PartD.com team developed a 2007/2008 Part D plan comparison tool and a comprehensive online tutorial for the Medicare.gov Part D Plan.

Making no 2008 Plan Decision is still a Decision – New Online 2007/2008 Part D Comparison Tool Helps Simplify the Decision Process.

Trying to decide on a new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan is not an easy task for many people and some people just simply decide not to make a Part D decision. What does this mean? If a Medicare beneficiary has a 2007 Part D plan and they make no choice for a new 2008 prescription drug plan, they will be automatically re-enrolled into their current plan for 2008. Dr. Susan Johnson leads the technical development of the Medicare-PartD.com website and saw the need for a tool that would quickly show people what they could expect if they stay in their same Part D plan next year – that is, if they decide not to decide. As Dr. Johnson notes, “From our experience last year, we found that some people had difficulty understanding the implications of their Part D plan’s Annual Notice of Change Letter and, overwhelmed by the task of choosing a new Part D plan, simply made no decision.

With the start of the new year, they found themselves in a Part D plan that no longer provided the most affordable prescription drug coverage.” This year Dr. Johnson and her team decided to make the decision process easier for people and developed an online tool with multiple ways to compare 2007 Medicare Part D plans with 2008 plans.

The tool was especially designed to meet the needs of Medicare support groups and low-income Medicare beneficiaries who receive “extra help” with the payment of Part D prescription drug coverage. Medicare will automatically re-assign millions of low-income Medicare beneficiaries into new 2008 Part D plans which qualify for the state’s premium subsidy. However, if a low-income Medicare beneficiary chose their own 2007 Part D plan, they will not be automatically moved to a new 2008 Part D plan and may face higher costs if they stay in their present 2007 plan. Using the new Medicare-PartD.com 2007/2008 comparison tool, Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare support groups can easily see if a current 2007 Part D plan will change significantly in 2008. For example, in Florida, there are five additional plans which qualify for premium subsidy in 2008 but did not qualify in 2007 and three very popular plans which no longer qualify for the premium subsidy in 2008. New Online Tutorial: The Medicare.gov Part D Plan Finder Guide.

The best way to get a personalized, medication specific list of the most affordable prescription drug plans is by using the Medicare.gov website. For some users and support organizations the only challenge is the complexity of Medicare’s Plan Finder tool.

Based on feedback from site users and clients, the Medicare-PartD.com team has developed a tutorial for the Medicare.gov Part D Plan Finder. This online tutorial walks the user through the Medicare system screen-by-screen while highlighting key aspects of the system. The tutorial also adds tips and cautions about using the Medicare.gov site. The Medicare-PartD.com staff has become quite familiar with the complexity, strengths, and weaknesses of the Medicare.gov Part D Plan Finder through the thousands of personal plan comparison they have completed for the Medicare community.

According to Dr. Johnson, “Many people are sending Medicare beneficiaries to the Medicare.gov site without any guidance and these Medicare beneficiaries are getting overwhelmed by the breadth of the system features. We not only help people with their Part D plan analysis, but also try to explain the Medicare.gov system to new users. The system, naturally, reflects the complexities of the Part D program and is not so simple for the casual user. We usually recommend that people set aside at least an hour to complete their Part D plan comparison and some additional time to analyze the results.”

The Medicare.gov Plan Finder tutorial and 2007/2008 Part D Prescription Plan Comparison tool are the latest additions to the already widely used Medicare Part D tools, calculators, and information available at Medicare-PartD.com.

For more information, visit medicare-partd.com

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