Pols override Medicare veto

New York State will continue to pay for prescriptions for dual-eligible Medicare and Medicaid recipients even if Medicare Part D will not immediately foot the bill.
The State Legislature unanimously voted last week to override the Governor’s veto of a bill providing “wraparound” coverage for disabled and low-income seniors.
Although the Governor had issued an executive order to have the state do just that, the law provides coverage until the State Health Commissioner said it is no longer necessary.
In his yearly budget, Pataki had called for the end to “wraparound” coverage on July 1 and said that the law was not necessary because confusion with Medicare Part D would be cleared up by that time. The Governor said that removing the additional coverage in the summer would save the state $216 million. According to published reports, the state spent $68 million for prescriptions in January 2006.
Meanwhile, a bill to stop prescription plans from dropping covered drugs at any time is ready to go before the Senate.
Although seniors with Medicare Part D are allowed a one-month window per year to change prescription plans, their providers are not limited in the number of times that they can add or drop drugs, possibly leaving seniors without coverage for prescriptions that were available when they signed on to the plan.
A bill introduced to the Senate last week, the Medicare Drug Formulary Protection Act, would force drug companies to continue coverage of those prescriptions until the end of a calendar year or until seniors could switch providers.
If a drug company wanted to drop coverage of certain medications during the Medicare open enrollment period – November 15 until December 15 – they would have to notify recipients.
Exceptions to the law would be if a generic drug is introduced or if the drug is taken off the market or deemed ineffective.