Another Medicare Plan D SNAFU
Monday, July 31st, 2006Like a lot of other baby-boomers I have been helping my parents figure out the complexities of the Medicare Plan D drug program. So far it seems to be accomplishing its primary purpose… Channeling billions in tax dollars and subscriber premiums to the major pharmaceutical companies.
It would have been nice, however, if they had made at least some effort to serve the interests of the retired folks that are the supposed beneficiaries of this program.
- My Mother doesn’t currently need any prescription drugs but they have bullied her into signing up anyway with their policy of escalating the premiums for anyone who does not sign up right away. So now she pays a monthly premium to the program and gets nothing in return.
- Some months after they signed up, my parents received a coupon booklet and envelopes for sending in their monthly Plan D subscription fees. But last week they received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that the Plan D fees were being deducted from their Social Security benefits. The letter said that they (my parents) had requested this. Since they had most definitely NOT requested this and since this meant that they were paying twice for their Plan D program, my Mother called up the Social Security Administration to ask what was going on… The bureaucrats at the local Social Security office said the letter had nothing to do with them (even though it said Social Security on the letterhead).Apparently any of the insurance companies administering a Medicare Plan D program (in this case AARP) can simply garnish a subscriber’s Social Security payments by simply typing something into a computer. My parents contacted AARP who admitted it was a mistake and promised to discontinue deducting the Plan D premiums from my Father’s Social Security paymets. That was in July, as of September, Social Security is still deducting the premiums and AARP is still cashing my parents premium checks (they continued to send them in the naive assumption that AARP was going to discontinue garnishing the SS payments). When contacted, an AARP supervisor agreed that the SS deductions were in error, and again promised to stop them in future. She indicated that AARP would not directly refund the overpayments. The best she could offer is a credit against future monthly premiums.
I see a very unfortunate trend in the US these days. Thanks to the huge influence of lobbyists on both the Federal and State legislatures, private companies are now able to directly interfere with, and benefit from, taxpayer financed programs and services. With Medicare Plan D we have over 40 private corporations that can directly access every citizen/taxpayer’s Social Security account. The Republicans talk about smaller government and privatization but what really seems to be happening is the wholesale diversion of tax dollars to politically well-connected corporations. The Medicare Plan D program is the domestic equivalent of Halliburton’s military support contracts in Iraq.