If you haven’t been really, really sick in the last few years, you may not have ever heard of the “donut hole” in Medicare Part D prescription drug plans. This is the common name in the medical field for a quirky coverage gap where, if you incurred $3,750 worth of drug costs in any given year, you would suddenly be paying for a significant portion of your drug expenses out-of-pocket. Last year, patients who breached that threshold would have to pay 35% of the cost of brand-name drugs and 44% of generic drugs until their out-of-pocket spending reached $5,000. After that, they would pay no more than 5% of their drug costs for the rest of the year. Of course, not everybody knew about the donut hole until they suddenly had to pay a significant fraction of the high cost of rare prescription drugs, and their expenses skyrocketed.
Continue reading “The Closing Donut Hole”
