Insurers Partner With Drug Stores To Offer Medicare Rx Plans

Aetna and Coventry announced separate arrangements to offer Medicare prescription drug plans, in an attempt to woo the burgeoning senior market.

Aetna is partnering with CVS to provide its plan, which has no deductible for generic drugs and costs $26 per month in premiums, Reuters reports. It also offers one-on-one counseling about prescription directions and potential drug interactions, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Seniors may use the plan at 7,200 CVS locations and more than 65,000 pharmacies in Aetna’s Medicare network, the Wall Street Journal notes.

Coventry, meanwhile, has joined forced with Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and Target to offer its plan with an average monthly premium of $25.60 and no annual deductible, Reuters reports.

“Everyone will be much more aggressive this year and there potentially could be a lot of movement between plans,” Dave Shove, an analyst with Bank of Montreal in New York, told BusinessWeek. Providing Medicare drugs “is a commoditized generic, over-the-counter world now and it may be a better fit for the Wal-Marts of the world than for the insurers.”