Jun 30 2011
As a result of health law changes to provide seniors with "doughnut hole" relief, Medicare recipients saved a combined $260 million on medicines as of the end of last month.
CQ HealthBeat: HHS Says Nearly Half A million People Have Gotten 'Doughnut Hole' Relief
The dreaded Medicare Part D prescription drug doughnut hole has been eased for nearly 500,000 beneficiaries so far this year due to the automatic 50 percent discount on brand name medicines that kicks in when enrollees reach the coverage gap, officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday. The 478,272 Medicare beneficiaries who would have had to pay the full cost of their prescription drugs after they and their insurance companies paid $2,840 for their medicines instead saved $260.5 million, or an average of $545 per beneficiary in the first five months of 2011 (Bunis, 6/29).
The Hill: Half A Million Seniors See Lower Drug Costs Thanks To Health Care Reform Law
Almost half a million seniors on Medicare had saved a combined $260 million on their medicines by the end of last month thanks to the health care reform law, the Obama administration announced Tuesday. A total of 478,272 people have taken advantage of the law's 50 percent prescription discount for seniors in the Medicare "doughnut hole," according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The month of May saw a sharp increase in the number of beneficiaries benefiting from the provision, up 76 percent from 270,900 at the end of April (Pecquet, 6/28).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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