How Seniors Choose Medicare Plans

A professor of Harvard University with a team of qualified people set about trying to find out how exactly seniors go about choosing their Medicare plans with a randomized study. This is of special significance right now because there are at least 24 million American senior citizens who have opted for the Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage. This enrolling process has gone on over two years because this is the open enrollment period which is due to end on the 31st of December this year.

It is likely that this huge lot of elderly people will choose from among 40 different plans. How they choose is a question of eternal amazement and it was to get some kind of a fix on this that this study was done.

What was observed increasingly was that many depended on the mailers that came from Medicare. There seems to be a very poor knowledge of how exactly these plans work – this is of prime importance because the plans tend to vary a lot according to the prescriptions that each individual needs. Even though they can call up Medicare and get personal attention and have their questions answered, there was very little inclination shown to do this.

Added to this, later switching of plans entailed additional payouts especially if they took a low-premium one in the first place that did not cater to the prescriptions that were relevant to them. What might be in order would be to simplify the plans and maybe personalize it to help seniors plan their Medicare better.