Seniors, Disabled Seeing Pros and Cons of Medicare Discount Drug Card

Senior citizens and the disabled could be getting the help they need when it comes to buying their prescription drugs. The first phase of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act went into effect last May with a temporary discount drug card. Since then, 4.1 million Medicare beneficiaries have enrolled and are saving up to 20%. Forty-year old Karen Wilson calls it her "Wonder Card." "On one I got prescribed recently it was a $20 drug. With my card, it was 67 cents," she said. She is on disability with more than eight prescription medications for everything from seizures and mood swings to pain killers and muscle relaxers. She`s one of a million Medicare beneficiaries who receive the low-income benefits. A generic drug that would have cost here $16.75 instead cost $1.07. A $110 name-brand antibiotic was only $9. But in order to apply for the card, Wilson`s father did most of the work. "I get under a lot of stress and have a lot of symptoms," Wilson explained. And some pharmacies are doing the same for their customers. "I think it`s extremely confusing. They get a lot of information from different groups, they get information from AARP, and information from different insurance companies," explained Linda Huggins, office manager at Tanglewood Drug Store. Medicare advises patients to go online to figure out which card is best. But that`s not so easy for most seniors. "Most of whom either don`t own computers or don`t know how to navigate the web," said Huggins. Huggins logs on for some of her regular customers to sort through the different prices, enrollment fees and cards offered by different companies. The government expects more than seven million Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in the card program by the end of the year. For more information you can call 1-800-MEDICARE or log onto www.medicare.gov