You Need To look up your Medications

No matter the number or type of medication you take, they all need to be verified each year. If you are keeping your existing plan or changing to a new Medicare plan, you should always check to see if your medication is in the Formulary.

The easiest way to do this is to goto Medicare.gov and look up your medications. I have found that you can find and store all your medications by following the prompts on this site. 

This process may seem a bit complicated or difficult, but  in reality it is very easy.  The benefit to you is that once done you can go back at anytime and look up your meds or delete meds.  Once on the site just follow these simple instructions:

1) They will ask you for your ZIP code, how do you get your health coverage, if you plan includes Part D for medications, do you get any extra-help paying for your drugs, and if you would like to add drugs.

2)  After you select the “continuer” button, the next screen will pull up a complete listing of plans offered in your ZIP code. By selecting your current Medicare plan, the site will pull up the formulary for that plan.  When you select the “’continue” button the site will ask for your medication information.

3) Type in the name of your drug.  All you must do is type in the first three letters and a dropdown list of drug names will appear.  If your medication is on this list, then select that drug. If not then keep typing the name till the drug appears in the drop-down menu.

4) A popup menu will then appear for the selected drug. Fill in the dosage, how often you take the drugs and if you use a pharmacy or mail order deliver for your medication. 

You can continue to add up to 20 different medications. When your done select “my drug list is complete”. 

5) Now select “Print My Drug List”. Do not continue even if the prompts ask you too. 

This is the most important part of the whole process. In the upper right had corner of the report you will see under the words my drug list, an item titled Drug List ID that looks like this (Drug List ID: 7783348992). WRITE DOWN THE COMPLETE NUMBER AS WELL AS THE DATE THE REPORT WAS GENERATED. Be sure to keep this ID number and date because it is needed to retrieve the list at a later time.

Whenever you want to update or look up your medications, all you need to do is go to the site and enter all data up to item #4. 

When you get to this point you will see on the left-hand side of the screen, a “retrieve my drug list” box. Enter your Drug List ID and the date from the last report, then select “retrieve my drug list”. The original report will now appear because it has been stored in a secured site within Medicare.gov.