Zyprexa

“It just allows a much easier life.” However, this fall the Carpenters worried that the first Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage plan might exclude Scottie Carpenter is one of 42 million Medicare beneficiaries nationwide grappling to understand the new prescription drug plan called Part D — one perhaps more confusing to people with mental illness.

Yet, with help from his mother and Ericka Gomez, a patient advocate at the Longmont Mental Health Center, he managed to make the transition without missing a single dose.

Medicare officials insist the same continuity of care can be achieved if people take early, appropriate action.

The program covers all major medications used to treat mental illness, from anti- psychotics to antidepressants to anticonvulsants.

Benzodiazepines, drugs used to treat acute mania in people with bipolar and anxiety disorders, represent the only notable exclusion.

States may ultimately cover this cost.

The problem is that some mental health community members struggle to take medications, much less switch plans to order them, said Ruth Arnold, the Medicare drug program’s point person at the Mental Health Center of Boulder and Broomfield Counties in Boulder.

Resulting glitches in prescription coverage for those who fail to enroll in the new program could leave mental health patients without medic...

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