A Medicare prescription drug plan or Medicare Advantage Plan will not help you very much if it doesn’t cover the prescription drugs that you are taking right now. Every plan maintains a “drug formulary,” which is a list of drugs that the plan covers.

Plans identify their medications based on 4 tier levels. Each tier level may have a different co-pay. Tier 1 medications are generic drugs and generally have the least expensive co-pay. Tier 4 medications have the highest co-pay.

If your drugs are not on a plan’s formulary or are assigned a co-pay that’s particularly high, consider another plan. You can look up which plans in Maryland cover all or some of your prescriptions by visiting the Medicare Website’s Formulary Finder. Select “Maryland” and enter your prescriptions in the appropriate location. You can do this anonymously on a general search, or you can enter your information for a personalized search.