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Letters to the Editor

Girl Scouts seek help with food drive

Hello. We are Girl Scout Troop 1890 and we will be in your area collecting food and supplies for our local Ronald McDonald House.

We will leave a bag on your doorstep that has a list of needed supplies. Please add what you can and leave it by your front door the following weekend when we will be back on Sunday, Dec. 14, to pick it up. You do not need to be home on collection day. Thank you for your generosity and Happy Holidays! --Callie, Claudia, Caroline, Emily, Erika, Julia, Kelly, Kelsey, Leah, Natalie, Simone, Suma and Tess

Urges comparison of Medicare plans

If you are a Medicare recipient, you have until Dec. 31 to enroll in or change your Medicare Prescription Drug Plan. I urge you to compare plans as soon as possible.

To do this go to www.mediare.gov/MPDPF. Click on the following: Find and Compare Plans, then Begin Personalized Search. Enter your social security number, effective date of coverage, your last name, date of birth and Zip code. You will be asked to describe your health in one word (optional). Then click on “Continue to General Search.” To get the most accurate costs depending on the drugs you use, you should enter the specific drugs and dosages. You can enter two local drug stores you prefer as well as a mail-order pharmacy.

The next step involves viewing a listing of the plans in our area and one can then pick three plans to compare. Be sure to compare plans as to monthly premium, annual deductible, full year cost for preferred pharmacy and full year cost for mail-order pharmacy.

You can then enroll, keep your present plan, or change to a new plan (see last column on the right of the listing of plans). Karlene’s drug list is different than mine so we usually pick different plans.

By choosing new plans this year, we both saved money over what our old plans would charge for 2009 and we picked plans with ratings of 4 or 5 out of 5.

Our old plans had a satisfaction rating of 3 to 3.5.

If you don’t have Internet access, you can call Medicare at (800) 633-4227 24 hours a day, seven days a week for assistance. — Bill Cunningham, La Canada Flintridge