Part D’s enrollment deadline came and went, and along with it the orgy of claims, counter claims, blames and counter blames. So now that at least a bit of the dust has settled, where are we?
Confused.
Depending on whom you read or watch or listen to, the program has either been a success or a failure, is working or is not, is profitable or a loser, has enrolled “enough” people or has fallen well short.
The reality is as confusing as the perceptions appear to be. In any effort to cut through the spin, I checked in with Bob Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates. His take is it is too early to tell how things are going, and in the absence of truly meaningful metrics, we’re just going to have to wait and see.
Here’s why there is so much confusion.
There is no consensus on how many seniors have signed up for Part D or have alternate drug coverage under other plans. For starters, health plans and the Feds can’t agree on who is signed up by whom. Some health plans have been told they have thousands more members than they can account for, while others are being told large numbers of their “enrollees” actually signed up for Part D when they already had coverage under Medicare Advantage or another plan.
As near as I can figure it, there are between 8 million and 4.5 million seniors still without coverage. More details to follow…
Meanwhile, Humana, one of the more “successful” health plans in terms of signing up seniors for its Part D programs, recently saw its debt ratings outlook downgraded by AM Best from ‘stable” to “negative” in part due to large Part D enrollment and associated reliance on government contracts and increased capital requirements.
And AM Best may be on to something. The Medicare Trustees recently projected that the Part D program’s costs would increase by 11.5% annually over the next ten years. If those projections hold true, early claims about the currently “favorable” loss ratios may be short-lived.
We’ll have to wait until at least mid-July for reasonably accurate enrollment figures, and accurate financials will take another five months or so. If someone provides numbers in either category before those dates, be skeptical.
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