New Site for Medicare Part D Comparisons

by Mary Jane Stern

One very time consuming project during the 2008 open enrollment was finding a new Medicare Part D plan.  I began by using Medicare’s site so I could find all the stand alone plans in my state.  This was good and got all the plans and the premiums.  But, after finding the plans and reviewing the premiums, the next step was to find out if the drug was in the plan’s formulary and what the co-pay/tier level was for each particular drug.  Let me tell you that took a lot of time.

As you probably know, each Part D plan offers different drugs and has various tier levels for drugs. And it varies from one plan to the next.  There is just no rhyme or reason, and nothing is standardized, except that they have to offer a minimum number of drugs for each category that are on Medicare’s formulary.  But those drugs don’t have to be their preferred choice.

If only there were something that could give you the information about all Part D plans in your state and your drugs.  Am I dreaming the impossible?  Could someone put all this together?  The answer is YES!

I stumbled upon a site called Q1Medicare.com.  My impossible dream came true.  They have a new service called Find A Drug Across All Plans. All you have to do is select your state and enter a drug name.  What you get is a listing of all the plans and the co-pay/tier level for that drug and even the monthly premium.  This is a great tool.

Below is an example for the drug Lipitor 10 mg for the State of Florida:

Currently the program has all the 2009 drugs and it hasn’t been updated yet for 2010, but hopefully when the “marketing season” starts this will be updated.

The site is a good starting point for Medicare’s 2010 Part D open enrollment. But please remember that some of the plans listed for 2009 might not be there for 2010.  Use the tool as a guide for the plan you might want to enroll in.  And, you could use it for the curiosity factor to see if you have been paying “too” much during 2009.