When Part D Matters

My mother-in-law shocked everyone this weekend when she announced that she’s going to retire. We honestly thought we would never see the day! She has a little store on a charming little town where she knows everybody and although she’ll never get rich, the store brings in enough money that she never goes wanting for anything. So for her to retire we were first shock and then immediately concerned that something is wrong. So the wife and I dropped everything drove down to see her, face to face and make that everything is OK.

Well, she was glad to see us and acted pretty normal, so that was good. But she says she’s tired, tired down to her bones, and she just doesn’t want to run the store anymore. She’s always had a problem finding good help and she’s never found an assistant manager that she could trust completely, so she’s decided to put the business up for sale and become retired.

Of course, that decision has opened a whole pandora’s box of questions and we have to tread lightly so we don’t offend her, but the wife went nuts with a hundred questions and we finally had to leave because I could tell the MIL was getting annoyed. We asked if there was anything she needed help with and surprisingly she asked if we would help her look into MediCare and the Medicare Part D coverage that I vaguely remember hearing about.

Now I’m not sure she really needs the help of if she just came up with this little taks to shut up the wife and divert her attention to a little project, but the wife grabbed onto that request like a boll weevil grabs hold of a cotton ball. And off we went.

Thankfully there is a lot of good information on the internet about Medicare and the Medicare Part D plans. We spent a couple hours reading up on it last night and we are so thankful to learn that MIL is completely eligible so it was a great relief to find that her medical needs will be taken care of during retirement.

Now the Medicare Part D coverage is about the plan you choose for paying for prescription drugs, and, to be honest, I found that a little more complicated to understand. From what I can tell of the benefits of Medicare Part D, you have a reasonably small deductible that you pay out of yourpocket each year, and then the Part D plan kicks in to pay 75% of the cost of your prescriptions, up to $2,510. After that limit, you have to pay for your prescriptions until you’ve spent $4,050, and from then on your prescriptions are covered again. This little gap between $2,510 and $4050 is called the “donut hole.”

There are a lot of dates and deadlines and limits to keep track of, so the wife has committed to learning all the requirements and helping her mother fill out the forms and keep track of everything. Thankfully, MIL is basically healthy and we’ll have time to learn all the details before she has to use it, and the wife is really good at bookkeeping type things, so this will give her something to do that she’ll be good at and can actually be helpful for her mother.

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