I’ve been looking at how Part D is affecting the Latino community and the results are scandalous. The full report was released earlier this week and its clear Latinos are suffering disproportionately from the poor design of Part D.

First there are the financial costs. Because Part D doesn’t have a guaranteed benefit directly from Medicare with negotiated prices, Latino beneficiaries and taxpayers are paying $59.3 billion dollars in excess costs over the next decade. The poor design of Part D in forcing seniors to choose among competing (and more expensive) private plans is also the chief source of confusion.

Out of all American seniors, only about 50% even know about the deadline. All seniors have also had difficulty getting through to help hotlines, with repeated busy signals and long waits the norm. Even when they do get through, a recent GAO study has found that 60% of the time Medicare’s paid experts are wrong on which plan is cheapest for seniors.

For the 3 million plus Latinos who are eligible for Medicare, these problems are compounded by limited English proficiency, lower average education levels, and a technological divide. This is troubling, because Latinos can really benefit from a properly designed prescription drug benefit. Latinos are more likely to have chronic illnesses and less likely to have employer based coverage. Interestingly enough, Latinos have a longer life expectancy than both whites and blacks, which means their personal savings are stretched further and that lifetime premium penalties for missing the May 15^th deadline will disproportionately impact Latinos.

While not releasing the full data, CMS has recently confirmed my fear and stated that only 2 million Latinos are enrolled. This means that more than 1 out of every 3 potential Latino beneficiaries do not have any drug coverage. And many of those counted in the CMS’s number are dual eligibles, who already had coverage before Part D took effect and were auto-enrolled from Medicaid. The percentage of eligible Latinos who previously lacked coverage and voluntarily enrolled in Part D is disturbingly low. And even for the dual eligibles, they may have been auto-enrolled into plans not suited for them. With less then a week before the deadline hits, Latinos are disproportionately likely to lack prescription drug coverage.

The CBO has indicated that if the deadline was extended about a million more people would enroll. We need the deadline extended to give more time to further reach out to the underserved Latino community and we need Congress to fix Part D to make it cheaper, simpler and guaranteed for all.