Q. What is Medicare Part D?
A. Congress approved the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003 to provide affordable prescription drugs to seniors and the disabled. It took effect in 2006. Some 36 million people are now enrolled in private insurance plans that pay most of the cost of their drugs. Medicare spent $62 billion subsidizing the program last year.
Q. Where does this data come from?
A. When pharmacies dispense prescriptions to Medicare patients, they transmit information to Part D plans about the patient, the prescriber, the drug, its strength and retail cost. The plans pay the claims and then submit the data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Medicare. ProPublica obtained and analyzed data for 2007-2011 for this project. We are currently displaying data for 2011 -- covering more than 1.1 billion prescriptions and refills. (We had previously displayed data for 2010; that information is no longer available.)
Q. Why is my health provider not in here?
A. Medications administered to Medicare enrollees during an office visit or in a hospital are covered by another part of Medicare, not Part D. That means they will not show up in our data. In addition, providers who did not write at least 50 prescriptions (including refills) of at least one drug under Medicare Part D will not show up. Nearly 364,000 providers are reported on Prescriber Checkup.
To continue reading this article visit: http://www.dailymail.com/News/201311240074
No comments:
Post a Comment