Drug Discount Often Unused, Study Finds
Despite a state law that allows Medicare recipients to save up to 20% on retail drug prices, many pharmacies are not giving the discounts unless senior citizens show their Medicare card and specifically ask for the reduced rate, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
That means that the discounts often do not reach those low-income senior citizens who need them most, researchers from RAND Health and the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Health Care System found.
The researchers trained a team of Medicare beneficiaries and sent them to 494 pharmacies in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area between April and May 2001.
They found that although 75% of the pharmacies offered the discount, most waited for the customer to show a Medicare card and ask for the discount before reducing the price.
Moreover, the study determined that patients who visited independent pharmacies, which tend to be in low-income neighborhoods, were less likely to receive the discount. Ninety-one percent of the chain pharmacies visited gave the discount, compared with 58% of independent pharmacies. Compliance was higher in the Bay Area than in Los Angeles County.
“The people who could most benefit from this, people with low incomes, are the ones who are not getting the discount because they are located in lower income neighborhoods,” said Dr. Joy H. Lewis, lead author of the study.
The law requires pharmacies that participate in the Medi-Cal program for the poor to offer discounts to Medicare beneficiaries. To obtain the savings, patients must by law show their Medicare cards--which many are not used to doing. Also, many senior citizens are simply unaware of the discount program, and the study showed that 45% of the pharmacies are not informing them.
“The more educated the patient, the more likely they are to receive the discount,” Lewis said. “I hope the study raises awareness about the law.”
Michelle Na, a pharmacist at Siloam Pharmacy in Koreatown, said the law has been in place long enough for people to know about it. She added that if they don’t bring their Medicare cards, she cannot make exceptions. “It doesn’t make sense because if I don’t have a card, I don’t know if the patient is really in Medicare.”
But Anna Scheybeler, a 64-year-old cancer survivor from El Monte who lives on $660 a month and will become eligible for Medicare in June, said pharmacists should make it easier for low-income patients to take advantage of the discounts. “I think that is terrible,” she said, referring to pharmacies that are not informing patients of the discount.
“They don’t care about us old people. All they care about is their own pocket.”
State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) sponsored the prescription-drug discount program, which passed in 1999, a year in which spending for prescription drugs soared by 17%.
It was the sixth consecutive year with a double-digit increase.
The law, which took effect in February 2000, gives patients a substantial discount on certain drugs on the list for Medi-Cal recipients.
The law will expire next year, but Speier is sponsoring another bill that will extend the discount program and will require pharmacies to post signs informing beneficiaries about the discounts.
