Colleen Bayard, the Alliance’s director of regulatory & clinical and regulatory affairs, spoke to WWLP News 22 this week about the impact of the Affordable Care Act on seniors in Massachusetts.
BOSTON (WWLP) – Government health officials say that President Obama’s national health care reform law is saving Massachusetts seniors big bucks.
Federal officials say the 2010 law has helped save Massachusetts seniors more than $76 million on medication bills this year.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicessays in the first eight months of this year, the Affordable Care Act has saved seniors in Medicare’s “donut hole” about $610 dollars. Previously, when seniors were in this “donut hole” they would go from making copayments for their drugs to paying 100 percent of the cost.
The law gives them significant discounts.
“There’s actually extra funding for medications for seniors,” said Colleen Bayard, the Clinical Affairs Director for the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts.
“They may not have enough money for their medications and it becomes unaffordable, but I think they’re trying to, they made changes with the medication in Medicare D to help with that.”
The average savings for a Massachusetts resident with Medicare will be $5,000. People with high prescriptions costs will save more than $18,000 from 2010 to 2022.
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