Now, the donut hole will be gradually reduced until it is completely closed in 2020.
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Ignore the fact that closing the donut hole actually is a spectacularly bad idea.
If you need more background about what the donut hole is, see the earlier article.
Hence, only 6 percent of seniors even spent enough on drugs to reach the donut hole threshold.
And instead of raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program.
Another point worth making is that not everyone who hits the donut hole does so to a significant degree.
Would you have guessed that the number of people hitting the donut hole declined dramatically between 2007 and 2009, confounding the experts?
As I noted above, less than one-sixth of those who hit the donut hole use it up completely, hitting the higher catastrophic threshold.
The AARP got the donut hole of Medicare drug plans filled.
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But closing the donut hole is a terrible idea that will drive spending upward, and only 6 percent of seniors were affected by it anyway.
Then, of the 31 percent of retirees in 2009 who enrolled in Part D and did not qualify for the low-income subsidies, the vast majority 81 percent never reached the donut hole.
An argument can be made that since the donut hole in pharmaceutical coverage for seniors is not completely filled until 2020, Medicare Advantage is still of considerable importance to our seniors.
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Seniors who fall into the coverage gap known as the donut hole will receive discounts of up to 50 percent on their prescriptions as we begin to close that gap altogether.
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In 2009, 37 percent of those who hit the donut hole did so in the fourth quarter of the year, making them liable for their own drug spending for three months at most.
Most of those who do hit the donut hole only end up being liable for a small amount of money at the end of the year, as their drug consumption for the year adds up.
In his rustic home tucked between orange and avocado groves, Cunningham wearily recalls wrangling with Roski over an odd 1, 200-acre piece of unincorporated land known as the "donut hole" because it is surrounded on all sides by Redlands.
It's home to the world's third-largest film industry and serves as a breeding ground for Canto-pop, a treacly transmogrification of Western pop-rock that can leave the listener feeling rather like a glazed donut -- coated in sugar but with a big hole in the middle.
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