Medicare Law Said to Trouble Nursing Homes
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: December 5, 2004
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - A wide range of experts on long-term care express serious concern that the new Medicare law will be unworkable for most of the 1.5 million Americans who live in nursing homes.
Nursing home residents take large numbers of prescription drugs, an average of eight a day. But many have physical disabilities and brain disorders that impair their memory and judgment. So they cannot easily shop around for insurance plans to find the best bargains on their drugs, as other Medicare beneficiaries are supposed to do.
Federal and state officials, pharmacists and nursing home directors said they had no idea how these patients would obtain their medicines under the new program, which begins in January 2006....
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Thomas R. Clark, policy director for the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, whose 7,000 members specialize in drug care for the elderly....and other experts said the range of drugs covered by Medicare drug plans would, in most cases, be more limited than what is available under Medicaid in most states. In any event, the drugs will be different from those now covered.
Thus, the experts said, doctors will need to write new prescriptions for hundreds of thousands of nursing home residents, switching them from the drugs they now take to those approved by Medicare....
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/health/05nursing.html?oref=login
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