Individuals with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for six months may now find it easier to obtain coverage through the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). PCIP was created by the Affordable Care Act to provide interim coverage until the Health Insurance Exchanges are up and running in 2014. Twenty-seven states administer their own PCIP. [...]

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You probably didn’t know it, but May is officially Older Americans Month. Since many members of the eDrugSearch.com community are seniors, and we are keenly aware of their struggles in managing their prescription drug costs, we thought we would take this opportunity to share some facts about the older population that might surprise you, courtesy [...]

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Copays used to be a reminder of how nice it was to have health insurance. Now, too often they are a reminder of how little insurance we really have. Not long ago, copays for prescription drugs were almost universally small, flat fees — as little as $5, no matter how expensive the medication you required. [...]

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We speculated last week that the big health insurance companies and their PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) may soon attempt to force employees toward mail-order drugs. It’s certainly a real possibility after the PBM Express Scripts began providing mail-order delivery as a default option for employer-based health plans. As I predicted then: 1. Soon, all other [...]

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We wrote recently about the rapidly growing business of mail-order pharmacies run by the pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) who work with employer-based insurance providers. It’s been a trend with no small hint of irony. You see, when Canadian mail-order pharmacies came on the scene in the ’90s, representatives of Big Insurance and Big Pharma trashed [...]

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You might find it interesting that — with the economy seemingly crumbling around us — one line of business is doing very well indeed: mail-order pharmacies. Medco Health Solutions Inc., the nation’s largest pharmacy-benefits manager (PBM), posted a 32 percent rise in fourth-quarter profits today — largely on the growth in the number of prescriptions [...]

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[The following is a guest post by our friend Dr. Jacob Milbradt, a Kansas pharmacist. Jacob graduated with distinction from the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy and currently works as a pharmacist in an independently-owned pharmacy in south central Kansas. He is founder and president of MrMedSaver.com, an Internet-based consulting firm that specializes in [...]

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With the annual election period for the Medicare prescription drug program beginning Nov. 15, elder-care expert Esther Koch says many seniors are currently in the wrong plan and are wasting money as a result. To get in the right plan for 2009, seniors are advised to use the Drug Plan Finder at www.MEDICARE.gov. Explains Koch: [...]

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BusinessWeek published a story this week on “Medicare’s Costly Doughnut Hole,” which mostly rehashes a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (reported here previously) that shows many seniors forgo needed medications rather than pay full price for their meds. The story also reports that the doughnut hole is getting bigger… The doughnut hole is exacerbating [...]

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We talk a lot on this blog about the 65 million Americans without prescription drug insurance, and the millions of additional seniors who fall into the Medicare doughnut hole every year. But for those of you fortunate enough to have an employer-sponsored health insurance plan, we know that life isn’t a bowl of cherries for [...]

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