Medicare Mistakes

If you are on Medicare and plan to change your Medicare Part D drug plan coverage be prepared for major errors.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — When Medicare mistakenly sent premium refunds to 230,000 people who had signed up for prescription drug coverage, the Bush administration said the error had resulted from a rare “computer glitch.” But government records and interviews with federal officials show it was the latest example of a strained, often dysfunctional relationship between two of the government’s biggest programs.

For more than a year, officials who run the two programs, Social Security and Medicare, have struggled to mesh their computer systems so that Medicare premiums are correctly withheld from Social Security checks, and low-income people get the extra help to which they are entitled. The problems are compounded because this information is collected and used by scores of private Medicare drug plans, each with its own procedures and computer systems.

Lawmakers worry that similar problems will occur as millions of people sign up for new drug plans starting on Nov. 15.

Gordon Smith Oregon's Republican Senator weighs in:

The commissioner of Social Security, Jo Anne B. Barnhart, and the Medicare administrator, Dr. Mark B. McClellan, discussed the problems with the Senate Finance Committee behind closed doors on Sept. 7. After the briefing, lawmakers said they did not fully understand the interaction between the two agencies.

“There seems to be greater confusion, not less,” Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, said after listening to the officials’ explanations.

What a mess. The article goes on for another page describing various other Medicare premium problems regarding major errors in premium billings..