Thursday brought two announcements from Medicare officials, one bringing good news, the other not-so-good news. The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Medicare) has announced the names of 10 medical facilities or doctors demonstrating the highest mark of improvement in the care of patients undergoing treatment for diabetes, congestive heart failure, and coronary artery disease. Medicare’s Physician Group Practice Demonstration project will award the 10 honorees with incentives totaling $16.7 million.
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Medicare officials say the financial incentives are just one of many new methods of reimbursement for optimum level of care, which brings better outcomes and more value to the program. The centers are exploring ideas with doctors’ groups, with the collaborative mission of finding more innovative and effective ways of paying our nation’s physicians.
On a more somber, but expected, note, monthly premiums for Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program will jump to $28 beginning in 2009, a $3-per-month increase over 2008′s premiums. Approximately 24.4 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare’s Part D plan.
There’s even a little good news here, too. When Part D began in 2003, projections put 2009′s premiums 37% higher than they will actually be.
Three factors driving the premium increase are:
- All things prescription are costing more, with influence in cost coming from price increases affecting drugs currently being marketed, new drugs entering the market, and the number of prescriptions the average American goes through in a year.
- 2008′s premiums were 50 cents less than originally calculated as part of a now-expired project. Premiums for 2009 will reflect that difference.
- The cost of catastrophic care has overburdened the pharmaceutical companies participating in Part D and their costs for 2009 will be adjusted to recover these unexpectedly high expenses.
Medicare officials say there are steps an individual beneficiary can take to reduce the impact of increasing prescription expenses. Since each individual case is unique, Medicare prescription drug benefits recipients can consult their case worker for advice on how to proceed.
