Congress passed a law in late 2022 addressing two key issues for patients insured through Medicare Part D. The law creates an annual $2,000 cap on patient out of pocket costs and it sets up a so-called “smoothing” process so that the costs are not incurred all in one month. Rather they can be “smoothed” or spread across the year.
While this promises to be a huge improvement for patients, we need to ensure this will be implemented clearly and simply for patients, and not be administered in a way to deny patients care under Part D.
CLL Society joined other advocates to raise awareness of the need to implement the new out-of-pocket cap and ‘smoothing’ provisions in patient friendly and approachable way as possible.
Note: Medicare eligibility is either by age (age 65+) or disability, and Part D is for generally for coverage of oral or self-injected medications.
