Every year, you should see if your Medicare Part D plan is the best value. You can change your plan between November 15 to December 31 during the open enrollment.

I found the new Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Finder a bit confusing and inconsistent, so here’s a few tips to guide you.

1. Enter your ZIP Code and other information, but when you get to Do you have Medicare Supplement Health Insurance (Medigap)? select I don’t know. I’ve found that sometimes, the website will automatically pull this information for you, other times it doesn’t.
2. After entering your drugs, copy down the Drug List ID and Password. The site times out after a few minutes of inactivity and it’s no fun re-typing in that list.
3. If you’re only interested in Medicare Part D Prescription Plan, uncheck Medicare Health Plans without drug coverage and Medicare Health Plans with drug coverage.

In 2011, I’m recommending both of my parents to go with CVS Caremark Plus (PDP) which is administered by SilverScript since it is the lowest overall cost for their medications.

We chose BCBS Traditional Medical Plan over Select Network since it offers out of WA coverage and the $225 deductible (no premium for Traditional) is less than $338.64 per year of Select Network premiums ($28.22 per month). The November SPEEA Spotlite has a good summary, but Premiums (which they call Plans Contributions) are different than on the TotalAccess website.

We didn’t choose Group Health since I’m not a fan of HMOs and the Aetna PPO+ deductible is high at $1500 even though Boeing contributes $700 to a Health Savings Account.

We also changed from Aetna Scheduled Dental to WDS Preferred Dental PPO. According to the SPEEA Spotlite, Aetna reimbursements are low and dentist will balance bill you for the difference between the charges and maximum allowable rate, known as “balance billing.” Dentists under WDS Preferred are prohibited from balance billing.