Research

February 17, 2022

Paying off the mortgage frees up a lot of money for other things. The homeowners in one study splurged on big-ticket items.

Older homeowners, however, are adding another priority: medications.

After a mortgage payoff, workers and retirees ages 50 to 64 spent 50 percent more on prescription drugs in a comparison with households who had no major changes in their monthly housing costs, according to a new study by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and funded by the U.S Social Security Administration.

The mortgage is typically a homeowner’s largest monthly expense. If medication spending rises when this big bill is eliminated, it supports the argument that some aging homeowners who are still carrying a mortgage may be choosing housing over necessary medical care.

This research is particularly relevant at a time older Americans are entering retirement with more debt. In 2016, four in 10 retirees had a mortgage – double the share in the late 1980s.

Not surprisingly, the researchers found some indication that lower-income workers and early retirees benefited more from eliminating their monthly payments. They have difficulty paying even for essential expenses, and the increase in their prescription purchases after paying off the home loan appeared to be larger than for higher-income groups with fewer constraints.

The researchers split the homeowners into two age groups – under and over 65. While homeowners under 65 sharply increased their drug spending after the mortgage payments ended, the Medicare beneficiaries did not.

The level spending after Medicare eligibility indicates that the program relieves some of the pressure on the family budget, the researchers said. Medicare also provides an average $5,000 annually to subsidize low-income retirees’ medications under the Low Income Subsidy program.

But for older homeowners who are too young to get Medicare but are still paying a mortgage, the study “raises serious concerns for health care quality and the costs to treat poorly managed conditions,” the researchers said.

To read this study, authored by Christopher Herbert, Jennifer Molinsky, Samara Scheckler, and Kacie Dragan, see “Older Adult Out-of-Pocket Pharmaceutical Spending after Home Mortgage Payoff.”

A blog post last year featured a similar study – this one about the older Americans’ adherence to medications after …Learn More

August 31, 2021

Several million retirees have spent so much on their prescriptions in recent years that they crossed over into the “catastrophic” phase of their Medicare drug plans.

Once catastrophic coverage kicks in, Part D drug plans require retirees to pay only 5 percent of their medication costs out of their own pockets. But there’s a catch: there is no cap on total annual spending, which can quickly rise to thousands of dollars if they need chemotherapy or a brand-name designer drug for a rare medical condition.

Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Medicare policy program, said that could change, because proposals to place a cap on total out-of-pocket spending in Part D plans have a bipartisan tailwind behind them. Democrats in the House recently reintroduced a bill that would limit spending to $2,000. Last year, the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee approved a $3,100 cap, which is currently part of a Republican prescription drug bill.

Now, President Biden says he wants to limit retirees’ spending in their Part D plans. However, the bills circulating on Capitol Hill could also become tangled up in a more complex debate about a related issue: the best way to control drug prices.

A flat dollar cap – if it passes – would be simpler than the current system for determining out-of-pocket drug costs, though it would mainly help people with extraordinarily high spending. Cubanski said most people on Medicare spend less than $2,000 out-of-pocket annually.

But in a given year, she said, “that could be anybody.” And as baby boomers stampede into retirement, more people will be pushed into catastrophic coverage at a time of continually rising drug prices. …Learn More

Behavior

October 18, 2018

A Squared Away reader wrote recently that he and his wife saved $2,400 a year by paying cash for their medications.   

When a pharmacy sells a prescription drug to a customer, the health insurer reimburses the pharmacy at a negotiated rate that covers its cost for the drug, its dispensing fees, and any additional markup. It’s often the case that a patient’s copayment exceeds the pharmacy’s reimbursement, resulting in an overcharge in the copayment. More than one in four copayments were overcharges in a March analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association of some 4,000 outpatient drugs and
9 million insurance claims by people of all ages.

We asked Mohamed A. Jalloh in Napa, California, to guide consumers on how to reduce their costs. He is a pharmacist, assistant professor at the Touro University California College of Pharmacy, and a spokesman for the American Pharmacists Association. 

Question: How can retirees access their option to pay a cash price for a prescription if it is lower than their Part D or Medicare Advantage plan copayment?

Jalloh: The big picture is that elderly patients should work with a pharmacist to see if they can get a better deal. If you process a prescription through your insurance – whether under an employer’s health insurance or Medicare drug coverage – the price may be higher than paying straight cash for the medication. Anyone can do this. But I imagine it helps seniors the most because they’re the ones taking the most medications.

The key is to ask the pharmacist to go over your medications with you. Do a medication check-up once a year. That’s the best time to see if a pharmacist can get a better deal for you.

Q. Is it common practice to negotiate a cash price?

Jalloh: I think that people do not know about this option and would really appreciate learning about it. It’s also important to remember that, in most cases, people are still going to get a better deal with insurance by paying, say, a $5 or $10 drug copay. …Learn More