What is it about us that makes us hate to “do the math”? And why is it that we elect legislators who act in somebody-else’s best interest, not ours?
A straight-forward plan would say to each person older than 65 that “you will pay X% of the cost of your perscription drugs and the taxpayers will pick up the tab for the balance.”
Even if it were 19.61% that Medicare paid and 80.39% that the Medicare recipient paid, at least it would be an up-front, here-are-the-facts plan.
Instead, we have a plan with lots of “ifs.”
IF, for example, you only spend $250 on prespecription drugs in a year, you pay 100%.
IF, however, you spend more than $250 on prescription drugs in a year you pay 25% on anything greater than $250 but up to a threshhold of $2,250.
So stop right there for a second and do the math.
IF the cost of your prescription drugs is $500 in a given year, you paid 100% on half of $500 and 25% on the other half of $500: 62.5%.
And so it goes, on up to$2,250, with the Medicare recipient’s actual share diminishing the further away he or she gets from that 100% “deductible.”
WARNING: In computing that range of $250 to $2,250, Medicare is totalling not how much IT spent on your prescription drugs and not how much YOU spent on your prescrption drugs, but on the combined total.
So the Medicare recipient is getting to that $2,250 threshhold alot faster than he or she knows --but doesn’t know how fast. That’s because the recipient doesn’t usually do the math to figure out how much Medicare’s tab is.
But rest assured, Medicare is. And when the total gets to $2,250 the largess stops. It’s like having a “second deductible.” And that second deductible is $2,850, during which Medicare pays out Zero% and the former Medicare recipient pays out 100%.
This largess continues until the total amount of one’s prescription drugs for the year reaches $5,100 --after which Medicare jumps back in and pays 95% of the cost for the balance of the year.
Math 101: At that $5,100 level the individual Medicare “beneficiary” has paid $4,100 or 80.39% of his or her prescription drugs for that calendar year --unless the grim reaper has filed a claim first!
The term “truth in advertising” comes to mind.
