Medicare lottery
June 25th, 2004, Viewed: 706 timesFrom The New York Times:
The Bush administration announced Thursday that it would conduct a lottery to select 50,000 people who will receive Medicare coverage of prescription drugs in the next 18 months, before drug coverage becomes available to all Medicare beneficiaries in 2006.
Looks to be a great project.
The government, Mr. Thompson said, will select participants at random from the pool of applicants, alternating between cancer patients and those with other serious diseases.
Who will be the lucky one?!
Beneficiaries will generally have to pay the same share of drug costs in the demonstration project as in the standard Medicare drug coverage that begins in 2006. They will also face a large gap in coverage, like the “doughnut hole” in the standard Medicare drug benefit. But under both programs, co-payments will be reduced or eliminated for low-income people.
Finally co-pay may be no-pay!
- Shephali