Help promised during Part D implementation

State officials say they’re trying to stay abreast of problems with the new federal Medicare Part D drug benefit, but the plan keeps posing new challenges, with no end in sight.

Gov. John Baldacci on Tuesday assured Maine’s elderly and disabled residents that the state will maintain a safety net to keep them supplied with the medications they need until Part D is running smoothly. Baldacci ordered the formation of a new task force charged with responding to problems as they arise.

Jude Walsh of the Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance said Tuesday that the group will give priority to immediate problems. For example, she said, the state continues to pay between $5,000 and $7,000 a day for medications not covered by the plans some Maine seniors are enrolled in. The goal is to switch those seniors into plans that provide better coverage or else help the drug plans iron out errors in billing processes that require enrollees to pay too much out-of-pocket.

The federal government agreed to reimburse Maine for those costs through the end of March but has refused to grant an extension. “We have to figure out where the money is going to come from,” Walsh said.

Another time-sensitive problem is that between 15,000 and 20,000 Mainers are enrolled in not one, but two Medicare Part D plans. Walsh said the problem arose out of the state’s “intelligent re-enrollment” of low-income seniors who were automatically but randomly assigned to plans by the federal Medicare office. By April 15, these enrollees must indicate which plan they want to keep or risk having the federal government make the decision for them.

On the horizon looms yet another federally imposed deadline: the May 15 cut-off date for current Medicare recipients to enroll in the Part D benefit or face a significant and permanent financial penalty. U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe on Tuesday issued a statement in support of extending the enrollment deadline through December of this year, calling the current deadline “unreasonable.”

The new Part D task force will be composed of staff from the governor’s health office and the state insurance bureau, pharmacists, health care providers and others with firsthand knowledge and experience with the federal program that took effect Jan. 1 of this year. The first meeting will take place this Friday in Augusta.