My 98 year-old mother is in a nursing home and her monthly medication bill was averaging about $300 per month. I know this because I have been handling all her bills for the last 2 years. She is not on Medicaid, and wasn't on any Health Insurance plan that had a drug benefit.
I signed her up for the Medicare Part D (Drug Benefit) in January. I must say the process was entirely painless, and I didn't have any problems once I found out which "Drug Benefit Plan" her pharmacy supported. I chose the AARP plan, and I was able to sign-up on-line in about 10 minutes of work! We just got the first 'bill" under the plan. The co-payment charges was $53 and the monthly insurance premium is $30 for a total monthly "cost" of $83. Anyway you cut it, she is "saving" money!
From my datapoint of one, all the horror stories being printed are probably B.S. or self-generated. There was absolutely NOTHING negative in the sign-up process nor the program to date! IT WAS AS EASY AS GRINNING!!
The people having problems with this probably have problems with voting. No matter how simple you make things, somebody will not "understand".
I found the exact same thing with my mother. So far, she's just paying the premium (out of her Social Security check), but I went ahead and signed her up, as she is 86 and you know she's going to have some big time $$$ RX down the line.
My mother belongs to a seniors group so I helped them all with this program. They were all thoroughly confused. What seemed so simple to me was mind boggling to them.
Social Security sent them a book that was 1/2 inch thick and IF they made it to the part about signing up with one of the (too many to count) companies they just gave up.
The main question was....what if they don't cover my meds? They were all scared to death of this program.
This could be considered a sampling of 10 people and every single one of them had the same concerns and questions.
I simply have a problem with MY money paying for a stranger's drugs.