Senior drug benefit gets "mixed picture" review

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. program to help elderly people pay for medicines has made them less likely to trim spending on things like food and housing to buy drugs, but the sickest still skip medications due to cost.

The first broad assessment of whether Medicare's so-called Part D drug benefit has eased financial hardship for elderly people shows not all problems have been erased, researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"It's definitely a mixed picture," said Jeanne Madden of Harvard Medical School, one of the researchers. "We saw some positive effects that we attribute to Part D."

Medicare is the state-federal health insurance program for people age 65 and older and the disabled. It helps pay costs for things like doctor visits and hospitalization.

Medicare beneficiaries since January 2006 have been able to purchase the Part D prescription drug benefit subsidized by the program and available through private plans.

Madden and colleagues found that while 14.1 percent of beneficiaries in 2005 reported skipping pills and prescriptions because of their cost in 2005, before the benefit existed, the figure dropped to 11.5 percent in 2006 after Part D was introduced.

In 2006, 7.6 percent of beneficiaries reported cutting back on spending on basic needs such as food, housing and utilities to afford prescription drugs, down from 11.1 percent who reported doing so in 2005 before Part D.

However, patients classified as the sickest reported no improvement in skipping medications because they could not afford to pay for them even after the Part D benefit began.