RespiteMatch.com Health Blog

With the November 15 start of the initial enrollment period for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit rapidly approaching, employees and retirees are becoming increasingly aware of the new Medicare coverage and the choices they will have. It is very important that employer and union sponsors of prescription drug coverage:

(1) communicate now with retirees, active employees, spouses and dependents about their employment-based prescription drug coverage and how it will work with the new Medicare prescription drug coverage, and

(2) continue to communicate with them clearly and frequently over the next several months.
Communicating now, and repeating that communication throughout the fall, will reassure Medicare-eligible employees and retirees that in most cases their decision will be easy, because one choice will be clearly better, and in many cases the best choice will be to keep their employment-based prescription drug coverage.

CMS has released a new partnership document, titled “Frequently Asked Questions About Retiree Prescription Drug Coverage and the New Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage,” which is intended to help people with Medicare who also have retiree drug coverage from an employer or union understand their options and make informed choices. In addition to distributing this document to retirees and other interested people, these FAQs are also intended to serve as a resource for employers, unions and other information intermediaries to use in developing their own communications to retirees. This document can be downloaded by clicking on the “Employee Retiree Communications” link on CMS’ Employer/Union Partnership webpage at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/medicarereform/pdbma/employer.asp.