Do You Want To Learn How To Pick The Best Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan?
This article is for people who do not want to join a Medicare Advantage plan and want to stay on original Medicare.
I help hundreds of clients each year review their prescription drug plans. Selecting the correct plan is very important. I find that many people will enroll in the same plan a friend or family has, or the name of the insurance company. People will also select the drug plan with the same company they have their Medicare Supplement Insurance. There is a better way.
- Deductible-The amount of money you pay before the plan begins to pay.
- Co-Payments- The amount of money you pay at the pharmacy when you pick up your prescription.
- Premium- Last but not least, the amount you pay each month for the plan.
Why try to figure all of this out on your own? Many plans change from year to year. How do you know you are picking the right plan? Here is what I’ve found.
Medicare has a FREE tool on their website. It makes it very easy to pick out the best drug plan. This tool does all the work for you. All you have to to do is go to the Official Medicare Website and begin the very simple process.
Here are step by step instructions:
- Got to www.medicare.gov
- Click the link that says, “Find Health and Drug plans”.
- Select “continue without logging” in unless you have or want to create an account.
- Select “Drug plan (Part D) and enter your zip code.
- Answer the questions.
- Enter all your medications, dosages and frequency. Click ‘Done Adding Drugs”.
- Select your pharmacy Click continue to plan results.
- Go to “sort plans by” and select “Lowest drug + premium cost”
This will take you to a list of all of the plans that are offered in your zip code. This gives you the approximate total out of pocket costs for the year. It takes into account the plan premiums, deductibles and co payments.
You can click on each plan that you want to know more about. To enroll, you can call the company on the non-member phone number or simply click enroll. For people already on Medicare you can only change plans during the Annual Election Period (AEP) that runs from Oct. 15th through Dec, 7th. If you are new to Medicare just enroll anytime the month before your Medicare part A and part B will be effective.
I am an independent licensed agent that works in most states and my services are free. If you need help or have any questions please call me at 1-800-230-3211. Thanks for reading.