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May 04, 2006 at 01:20 PM
Researchers at the U.S. Government Accountability Office say Medicare prescription drug program printed documents and Web sites are probably too confusing for many consumers to understand.
When GAO researchers tested Medicare Part D program consumer materials on 11 Medicare beneficiaries and 5 of the beneficiaries’ advisors, the researchers found that the testees had trouble using the materials to complete 18 sample tasks.
None of the beneficiaries and only 2 advisors could compute projected out-of-pocket costs for a plan that provided standard Part D coverage, and all testees could complete only 1 of the 18 sample tasks, Leslie Aronovitz, a GAO director, writes in a letter to members of Congress summarizing testing results.
When the GAO researchers asked 7 testees to complete 34 tasks using the Medicare Part D Web site, the average testee got only halfway through each sample task before time expired, Aronovitz writes.
In addition, when GAO researchers placed 500 calls to the Part D telephone hotline established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, customer service representatives answered 374 calls in less than 5 minutes but took longer than 15 minutes to answer 64 of the calls.
