Drug-subsidy notification falls short

Some low-income seniors might have missed out on federal subsidies because the government did not notify them that they could be reimbursed for past prescription drug purchases when they enrolled in Medicare’s drug benefit, a Government Accountability Office study has found.

The problem is one of several that has complicated the enrollment of the nearly 7 million “dual-eligible” people -- who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid -- according to the study, which is being released today.

By law, recipients eligible under both programs must get coverage retroactive to when they became eligible, sometimes as long as several months before.

Medicare paid insurers $100 million last year to provide that coverage. However, until March of this year, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not inform the beneficiaries that they could seek reimbursement for drugs bought during the retroactive period, the GAO found. More than 400,000 beneficiaries could have been affected.