It’s healthcare open enrollment season, and folks on Medicare needs to be especially aware of potential changes to their insurance policy.

“Plans are dropping insulins,” says Diane Omdahl. Omdahl is a registered nurse and longtime expert in navigating the Medicare system; she co-founded a Medicare consultancy named Sixty-Five Incorporated. “Plans have the choice to not cover drugs, and that’s what’s happening. It’s going to be tough.”

Omdahl is urging Medicare recipients who use insulin to examine to ensure that that each one of their medications will likely be covered next yr. Your plan is likely to be dropping your medications from its formulary, and should you reenroll without double-checking, you can end up out of luck: “Come January you’ll be locked in for the entire yr.”

In case your insurance doesn’t pay for the insulin you’re using, it could cost you hundreds. High prices may be downright ruinous for a lot of seniors: A 2022 evaluation by Yale academics found that just about 20 percent of Medicare recipients who use insulin reach “catastrophic” levels of spending to pay for his or her medicine.

That was speculated to change. In the summertime of 2022, the U.S. Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which capped the worth of insulin at $35 per 30 days for Medicare recipients. However the copay cap, which went into effect last January, isn’t universal — it applies only to insulins listed on the insurer’s formulary. Not every insurer covers every variety of insulin, and insurers can change the medications they cover from one yr to the following.

Omdahl believes that insurers are dropping insulins and other medications to compensate for a significantly altered insurance landscape. The Inflation Reduction Act suddenly made insulin a much less profitable product for Medicare insurers. And a deluge of requests for expensive blockbuster drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro has caused insurers to scramble.

To evaluate the scope of the changes, Omdahl conducted an off-the-cuff survey of how 22 Medicare plans plan to cover insulin in 2024. She found that 10 plans, nearly half of them, are dropping at the very least one insulin from their formulary. 4 plans are dropping 4 or more different insulins.

Tips on how to Check Your Coverage

The very first thing to do, Omdahl says, is go to Medicare.gov and make a profile. You possibly can input every drug you’re taking and see in case your plan will cover those drugs in 2024. You can even see how other plans for which you’re eligible treat the identical drugs.

Omdahl advises using the official website if in any respect possible. Calling in generally is a nightmare: “I’ve been hearing that the wait to confer with a rep is 2 to 4 hours!”

The time is now, says Omdahl: “Medicare beneficiaries which have diabetes need to check out what’s happening before the tip of the open enrollment period, which is December 7.”

In case your plan is dropping your insulin in 2024, you’ve got a selection: Either change your medication, change your plan, or prepare to spend loads extra money. If changing drugs seems essential — for instance, should you use Levemir, which will likely be discontinued next yr — you almost actually have to speak to your clinician first.

“You’ve got lower than a month now to confer with your doctor and find acceptable substitutes. That you must start yesterday!”