Ohio Pharmacists and Medicare Part D
Via the Clevenland Plain Dealer:
Only eight pharmacists in Ohio have taken up Gov. BobTaft’s offer to pay for incorrect charges forprescriptions for low-income seniors.
Seniors and disabled Ohioans who used to get drug coveragethrough Medicaid should be charged no more than a $5co-payment for each prescription from their new private drugplans, to which they were switched under the Medicare drugbenefit that took effect this year.
But some have been mistakenly charged as much as $250,according to state officials, and were leaving the pharmacywithout their drugs.
Ohio is one of more than two dozen states stepping in tohelp seniors until the glitches in the federal program canbe fixed.
The pharmacists sent claims to the Ohio Department of Job& Family Services for overpayments for 14 patients and72 prescriptions as of Thursday, said spokeswoman CarmenStewart. The claims amounted to less than $3,000, he said.
Just because few pharmacists are seeking help doesn’tmean the overcharge problem has been solved, said ErnestBoyd, executive director of the Ohio PharmacistsAssociation. Some of the state’s 10,000 pharmacistsstill don’t know about the 3-week-old offer ordon’t have the staff to do the paperwork, he said.
Last week, Taft extended the state’s offer throughthe end of February.
“While the federal government has made progress incorrecting the problems with this new prescription drugprogram, we are not yet where we need to be,” he said .