Sickest patients struggle under Part D

BOSTON, April 23 (UPI) -- The Medicare Part D drug benefit has produced positive outcomes, but some of the sickest patients still skip medications because of money, a U.S. study says.

Jeanne Madden and Stephen Soumerai of the Harvard Medical School in Boston said that since the enactment of Medicare Part D in 2006, the sickest patients, who typically have high drug expenditures, are still skipping medications for financial reasons -- despite the new benefit.

Prior to the Medicare Part D, 30 percent of beneficiaries had no drug coverage, since Part D, about 10 percent of beneficiaries still have no drug coverage, the researchers said.

The investigators examined survey responses from 24,234 Medicare enrollees who participated in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey from 2004 to 2006.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the rate of skipping pills and prescriptions due to cost declined from 14.1 percent of beneficiaries in 2005 to 11.5 percent in 2006, while spending less on basic needs to afford medicine declined from 11.1 percent to 7.6 percent.

But the sickest patients, who skipped pills at about twice the rate of healthier patients in 2004 and 2005, experienced no improvements in pill-skipping after Part D began in 2006.