Medicare part D: Ongoing challenges for doctors and patients

The Medicare Modernization Act was intended to improve access to prescription drugs for millions of seniors, by providing a range of benefit packages with different prices and different formularies for beneficiaries to choose from. The major challenge for physicians has been to recognize when a Medicare beneficiary has coverage versus when that patient is in the "doughnut hole" where Medicare beneficiaries do not have coverage and therefore have to pay the full cost of the drugs out-of-pocket. A second challenge is that different Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in different drug plans, and drugs that are covered in some plans are not covered in other plans.