Released: July 11, 2006

Medicare drug plans info often wrong

Source: By Robert Pear, New York Times (Free Registration)

Federal investigators said Monday that Medicare prescription drug plans generally provided incomplete and inaccurate information to callers who asked questions about the new benefit. The findings, from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, are significant because the premise of the new program is that consumers will make informed choices among dozens of competing plans.

Investigators placed 900 calls to 10 of the largest companies that offer drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries. They reached customer service representatives in 864 calls. The plans provided accurate, complete responses to one-third of the calls, 294 of the 864. Twenty-two percent of the 864 responses were inaccurate, 29 percent were incomplete, and no answers were provided to the other questions.

Two of the 10 companies gave inaccurate or incomplete information at least 75 percent of the time, the report said. And operators at the same company sometimes gave different answers to the same question. Insurers typically offer two or three Medicare drug plans in each state. They have different premiums and co-payments and cover different drugs.

The G.A.O. said, “Relatively few customer service representatives were able to accurately identify the least costly plan and calculate its annual cost.”

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