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News
Your source on union-negotiated health care benefits
Medco is back for Ohio Med Enrollees July 1;
ExpressScript refills to roll over to Medco
April 18, 2005 - Effective
July 1, 2005 state employees enrolled in the Ohio Med PPO will get their
prescriptions through Medco as the one year contract
with Express Scripts will not be renewed. Medco was recommended
for selection by the JHCC after an extensive Request for Proposals process
was concluded this spring. The RFP asks questions about such matters as
customer service issues, quality initiatives, retail network access
and price.
Employees who have prescriptions with refills at Express
Scripts should have those active prescriptions automatically transferred
to Medco. Such employees may want to contact Medco to make sure
their prescription transferred correctly. Medco’s 800 number which
will be active during open enrollment is (800) 903-8030. Employees
should receive welcome packets from Medco with all the information they
need to mail their prescriptions to Medco.
The drug co-pays that employees pay will remain
the same, although the Medco formulary will be different from
Express Scripts. Medco’s website, which will list their
formulary, is www.medco.com.
The formulary for Ohio Med enrollees will be Rx Selections.
Employees who are using a drug that was on the Express Scripts formulary,
but is not on the Medco formulary will be grandfathered for 6
months (until January 1, 2006) and will be charged the lower
formulary co-pay for that 6 month period.
After that extension, if the employee
stays on the non-Medco formulary drug, the co-pays will increase
to the non formulary co-pay.
Marianne Steger, OCSEA Director of Health Care Policy,
advises, "Employees should check with their doctors during this six
month period to see about switching to a Medco formulary drug, if they
want to reduce their drug co-pays."
Steger co-chairs the Joint Health
Care Committee (JHCC) for Labor.
Many health care open enrollment fairs
are scheduled throughout the state between April 19 and 30. Such
fairs provide an excellent opportunity to learn more about benefit choices
from the health plans’ representatives.
A complete schedule of dates and locations was distributed
with your paycheck on April 2 and published in the open enrollment edition
of Pathways, which will be distributed in mid-April. In addition, please
look for posters identifying the fair(s) closest to your work location.
See Related
More HMOs available; Aetna
is back, Kaiser and SummaCare are gone
Medical Mutual will keep
Administering the Ohio Med PPO
Kaiser enrollees options;
Chart below compares HMOs, Ohio Med PPO
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