You better shop around, uhuh!

´There´s some things that I want you to know now (Uh-huh-...ooo)

A just as sure as the winds gonna blow now (Uh-huh-...ooo)

The plans come and the plans gonna go now (Uh-huh...ooo)

Before you tell ´em that you love ´em so now My mama told me...´

you better shop around´ (Shop, shop around)

whoa-yeah You better (uh-huh) shop around (Shop, shop around)

apologies to Smokey Robinson

If consumers stay put in their current Medicare prescription drug plans, the average beneficiary will see a 21% increase in their monthly premiums for 2008, says new analysis released by Avalere Health.
Using newly released CMS data and its proprietary DataFrame(R) database, experts computed an "enrollment weighted" average premium for the Medicare Part D marketplace. Under this method, the premiums of plans with the most enrollees are assigned a heavier weight relative to plans with scant enrollment, giving a truer measure of the beneficiary experience. For example, a premium increase for a prescription drug plan (PDP) with 3 million enrollees carries vastly greater impact on more people than a premium increase for a plan with 10,000 enrollees.

"The reality of the Medicare experience is that beneficiaries have been very loyal thus far to their initial plan selections," said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health. "If consumers stick to their choices again, they are likely to see a dramatic increase in their monthly premiums. But, consumers who shop around may be able to find lower cost alternatives."