Choosing a Medicare prescription drug plan can be confusing. When the open enrollment comes around you can choose a drug plan from Medicare and also change your medicare advantage plan.
You want to know what the top Medicare drug plans are for 2023. Now it could be
October of 2022. It could be November/ December 2022 or could be the year of 2023. This is going to be
good for the whole year of 2023 but if you’re looking at this because of open enrollment (which is October
15, 2022 until December 7th, 2022) this is good for that also.
I want to show you how to go through it. Now some of you might be wondering, “Hey! I just want to know what the top plans are! Just give it to me!” Well I can tell you right now the problem with just
handing out the top prescription drug plans. I can say, “Hey! There’s silverscript! There’s a Wellcare Medicare part d plan.
There’s, you know, Aetna or an AARP Medicare plan.” I mean there’s a ton of prescription drug plans in your area.
The problem with this is it’s all individual. Meaning somebody who takes levothyroxine and
another person takes some other drug, atorvastatin or whatever. Everyone takes different
drugs. So you have to punch in your drugs to figure out which the best plan is for you.
Now some of you might be wondering, “Well hey! I tried to call my agent but he’s not getting back
to me!” or, “Nobody wants to help me with my drug plan!” I can tell you right now- if you have an agent
that has your Medicare Supplement Plan AKA your Medigap Plan G or whatever it is and you try to call
another agent and you say, “Hey! I just want my drug plan done! My medicare supplement plan is with this other guy!”
Most people maybe they’ll do it. Most people- they don’t want to do it. They’re not. The drug plans are a
nightmare. You’re not going to make any money on it so most people will not do that. But hey, maybe
your agent is picking up the phone and he can take care of you.
Or maybe you just want to do it on your own. So I’m going to give you a tutorial on how to do it.
So first you have to go to medicare.gov. So let’s punch that in. Hopefully it’s not too loud here. So,
medicare.gov, you punch that in. The next thing you’re going to do, you’re going to see this guy with the
hat on. It’s going to say, “open enrollment starts October 15th.” Now I’m making this video October 13th.
Remember- this is good for a year. So if you’re watching this in 2024 keep watching. So now we’re going
to do this: find “Health and Drug plans”. So right here, underneath this guy with the hat on, you’re going to
click on “find plans now”.
Now you’re going to put in whatever zip code you live in. So let’s just put in, I’m not going to put in
my ZIP code, but I’m going to put an old zip code that I used to live in, 19468 and this is for 2023. Now if
you’re watching this in 2022 just starting Medicare you can use this also but just click 2022. If you want
this for starting January 1st obviously open enrollment you’re going to click 2023.
Then you’re going to select “Plan Type” right here you’re going to just select “Drug Plan.” Even if
you want to look at Medigap plans or Medicare Advantage plans- don’t do it in the same thing. Separate
- So just hit “Drug Plan.” Hit apply. Then you’re going to hit start. Right here. Center of the page. Now I
always write, “I don’t get help from any of these programs” when it comes to this page: help with your
costs/ do you get help with your costs from one of these programs.
Now if you’re on Medicaid or something like that that’s a whole different ball game. I always click
“I do not get help”. I don’t click “I’m not sure” because they might give you information you don’t need. So
Hit “I don’t get help from any of these programs”. Hit next. Tell us your search preferences. Do you want
to see your drug cost when you compare plans? Yes. That’s the only thing we want to see is the drug
cost. So we hit yes and it says great. Then we hit next again.
This is pretty simple so look. I’m going to punch in a couple of the top drugs that are out there.
Where pretty much a lot of people take. So people take thyroid medication. They take cholesterol. They
take blood pressure. This is almost every senior that I’ve talked to. Not almost. Every. Ninety percent of
them take blood pressure, thyroid or a Statin drug.
So let’s punch in atorvastatin. Well let’s put in yeah let’s put in atorvastatin . See how it pops right
up on the screen after I put in a couple of letters? So you’ll just click on the atorvastatin if that’s what you
take. Then you’ll click add drug. Right here. It will go to the next page which says the dosage. You can
click on this Arrow right here. It’ll say 10 milligrams/ 20 milligrams. Then it’s the quantity. 30 every
month. That would be one pill a day obviously. Stay with me here. I hope this isn’t boring you.
So “add to my drug list” is what you’re going to hit to add this drug. Bang! There it is! Now you
can always go back to this and edit the drug or remove the drug. So sometimes I’m talking to a client and
I’m going through this to look up their drugs. They say, “Oh! It’s not atorvastatin! I actually forgot it’s
Lipitor!” or, you know, whatever it may be. They switch the drug. They forget what it is. Or they don’t take
it anymore so they have to edit or remove the drug.
So here’s one. Let’s add another one. Let’s put in lisinopril. That’s a popular drug. Center. Pills.
Right here add drug. Look at the milligrams. We’ll say 30 milligrams and then once a day or let’s say you
take you know every two months every three months whatever it may be. We’ll just we’ll put it in every
three months. Why not add to my drug list once again. You’re going to put that in there. So now we have
two. I’m going to put three drugs in here because this is a fun day. So let’s add another drug right here.
So, what did I say? No we put blood pressure oh levothyroxine let’s do a thyroid drug. So I put in
Levothyroxine and here we are. Levothyroxine Sodium. Now really look at the bottle for your
prescriptions because you don’t want to think that you take, you know, like Synthroid or something like
that and really you take levothyroxine you know. This is all on Medicare.gov.
You don’t want to put in the brand because that’s going to show your cost. If you
take the generic, same thing, you don’t want to put in the generic if you take the brand. So you add the
drug. As for the doses we’ll just leave it where it is and “add my drug to the list”. Now I have the three
drugs that I take supposedly, I don’t take either any of these, but done adding drugs is the next thing. I’m
done with this so I’m going to hit, “done adding drugs”.
it’s going to say, “find my pharmacy” now. It has my ZIP code in there, which is my old zip code,
and then I can punch in a name of a pharmacy here and hit “find pharmacy”. Usually I go down I mean
most of the time I’m talking to someone on the phone and I’m doing this so I always hit “mail order”. Just
always do that and then I look for if they say, “I go to Rite Aid.” I’ll click that. Or if they say, “I go to CVS.”
I’ll click that. Sometimes maybe they won’t tell me. Or maybe they say, “Hey! Can you check my drugs?”
They’ll email the drugs and I’ll just say, “Well most likely they go to CVS, Giant {which is a grocery store}
or Rite Aid or something and I’ll just put those in.
So then at the bottom here you’ll see, let’s get rid of this at the bottom, you’ll see the pharmacies
and I’ll click “done” right here all the way to the right at the bottom. Hopefully my picture isn’t there as I’m
doing this video now. It comes to the page which shows the prescription drug plans. Now I can tell you
right now a lot of my clients have Silver Script smart saver. The reason being is once again this showed
up because it sorts the plans by lowest drug and premium cost.
Now what that means is there’s a premium for the plan which is $5.20 cents for this
Silver Script which is owned by Aetna which is owned by CVS. $5.20. This is the
lowest Premium cost this plan. That’s what you’re going to pay the plan each month just to have the plan.
So you’re going to send $5.20 to Silver Script. Then on top of that you’re going to look, your yearly drug
cost is going to be $119. So this times 12. 5 times 12 plus the 20 cents is six it
probably is like $62 or whatever for the year. That’s what you’ll pay Aetna and then your yearly drug cost is
going to be $119. That’s going to be co-pays or deductible or part of this deductible. Not bad- pretty
cheap for three drugs all year long, $120 dollars.
Do you live in Florida or Pennsylvania? It makes a difference. Tampa and St. Petersburg Florida can even be different for a Wellcare prescription plan.
We’re going to compare some of these drug plans. So we can either look at the plan details right
here and you click on remember open enrollment starts October 15th but if you’re first going on Medicare
you need a drug plan that month so you don’t do it just during the open enrollment period. You might do it
in March because you’re first going on Medicare. Plan details right here, if you click on that it’s going to
show you this plan and this plan only and it will have the non-member phone number if you’re not a
member. That’s what you’re going to call if you remember. You call this. That’s if you want to sign up for
the plan over the Phone. Usually they’ll have a button here that says enroll somewhere. Now you can go
down and scroll to say $5.20 blah blah blah it’ll tell you in network preferred now.
CVS owns Aetna which owns silverscript. So obviously that’s going to be your preferred
pharmacy. Which means it’s going to be cheaper. So look at this atorvastatin Rite Aid with silverscript.
Now with another plan it might be cheaper but for the year it’s going to be $24 at CVS. Look at all these:
Giant $228. $228 and $22 dollars for mail order. You might want to look at mail order of course. Now
Levothyroxine. $24 for the year. So that’s $2 a month it’s going to cost you and then the
lisinopril $9. Now your total yearly drug cost is going to be $57 for the total of this.
So total yearly drug Plus premium, I’m sorry you don’t add the 60 to the 120, that’s what it is. So
it’s going to be $120 total for your drugs. Let’s just scroll down a little bit. It shows you the month. Now
the reason why it shows you the month is because it changes from different months. 627 then it goes to
four dollars so oh I know why it changes, because we put in that we don’t take the one drug every month
so this is going to show you some of the drugs you only take once a year, something like that.
This will show you the exact amount each month. Where this might change is some of you might
hit the donut hole. That’s going to show that you might say, “Wow! It was this and then all of a sudden it’s
400 and something dollars!” That’s because you hit the donut hole and it’s going to cost you more. Let’s
scroll up quickly and let’s hit the back button. Back the search results right here up on the left. Hopefully
you can see that. You click on that right above silverscript smart saver and it goes back, loads up and
then you see all the different plans.
Now well care right here is also a popular plan. It’s popular because a lot of people take
generics and if you’re taking a couple of generics this is what you’re going to see most likely. Silverscript,
Wellcare, whatever it may be- Cigna saver. So let’s compare these three. You click on add to compare.
Which is right next to each plan’s details. There’s three of them. I just clicked on them. If you
notice at the bottom of the screen there’s the plans and I’m going to take my cursor click on “compare”
and it’s going to show me that the three of them across so silverscript I’m paying them five bucks a month
$5.20. Well care I’m gonna pay them $11.10, this doesn’t change. You’re going to pay that to the plan to
have the plan but if we scroll down we’re going to see okay they all have the same deductible. Deductible
is just what you pay first before the plan starts kicking in basically and what some of them you you want a
high deductible because the drugs are cheap.
Now look at this. Obviously CVS with this with silver scripts gonna be cheap but then it’s different
with different plans you know. Look at this CVS for Cigna saver drug plan. The plan is only you know seven dollars
more a month But this so
CVS it’s 436 compared to 120. so this is going to be oh this is where go to my Pharmacy and so forth
you’re going to look at this page and say okay obviously the Silver Script is the one for me if these are the
drugs that you’re taking depends on the drugs then you’re gonna say, “Okay! I see you know I’m not going
to rite aid! That’s expensive! I’m not going to Giant. This is where I want to go- CVS.”
Let’s click on the plan details and you’ll go back to the plan details and that’s what I showed you
before and you can dissect this now like I said starting in a couple days. There should be a click to enroll
button right over here or somewhere on this page. You will click and you can enroll right online now if
you’re scared to do this. I completely understand you don’t want to screw things up. You can always call
someone to help you do this and if it’s really bad you know, you- like I said, can call the company directly
(non-members, right up here) and ask them all the questions that you want. Just hope the phone lines
aren’t busy all the time, but hey you have
until December 7th.
I can tell you right now October’s a nightmare. There’s so many people trying to get in
because everyone wants to get it over with. So if you call like the end of November, most likely I would
call in October, but then try November also. It’ll probably get easier and easier,
I hope this helped everybody out there! Like I said I can’t give you the top companies like the
thumbnail said unless I see your drugs and if I had to do everyone’s drug plan who came here and
watched the video then I’d be doing 10 000 drug plans you know over the course of five years probably or
something like that. Depends on how many people call me but it would be unbearable between these two
months. So it’s great for people to know how to do this themselves even if they want to use a broker too,
or an agent to do this for them. At least you see what the best plan is for you.
Thanks for watching this video! I’ll see you at the next one! Oh real quick- there’s a link in the
description. You might want to click that to another video and also subscribe to the channel so that you
can see other Medicare videos as well as Social Security videos and so forth. Take care!
Disclaimer: This video and blog post are for entertainment purposes only. If you want advice on Medicare or any of its plans, please speak to a licensed agent, whether it is me or another licensed agent. No advice should be taken from this video or blog post. If you don’t speak to me about your individual concerns, I can’t give you my 100% opinion. Brian Monahan and Medicare 365 are not responsible for any actions that you take without consulting with a licensed insurance agent.
