Chart of the Day: Medicare Part D Enrollees with High Out-of-Pocket Costs

The standard Medicare Part D drug benefit has a “catastrophic threshold” above which enrollees pay up to 5% of their prescription costs out-of-pocket. The Kaiser Family Foundation finds that, in 2017, a million Part D enrollees who didn't qualify for subsidies had out-of-pocket spending above the catastrophic threshold, with average annual out-of-pocket costs exceeding $3,200. The foundation says that, although people with out-of-pocket costs above the threshold accounted for only 2% Part D enrollees in 2017, their costs accounted for 20% of the $16 billion in total out-of-pocket spending by beneficiaries that year.

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