It’s time for you to decide on a Medicare’s prescription drug plan! The enrollment period started today and continues until the end of December, this way allowing the elderly to reconsider their drug coverage options.

Senior citizens opting for doing nothing may be surprised next year to find out that their plan doesn’t cover anymore the drugs they need. According to David Sayen, regional administrator in the San Francisco offices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, "there are more changes than we've seen in the past, so we think it's a little more important to shop."

Now it’s the perfect time for seniors already in the health insurance program to add, renounce or change their prescription-drug plans.

In the U.S. government’s social insurance program, people must decide on one of two plans: the original fee-for-service Medicare plan, or a federally financed Medicare Advantage plan, which allows them to combine health and prescription drug coverage for one cost.

Most of Medicare plans are adding or raising deductibles. Moreover, some of them are charging higher co-payments for brand-name drugs, particularly drugs not on their preferred list.

This is the 4th year when the elderly are allowed to decide on a prescription drug plan starting January 1, 2006, when Medicare Part D went into effect. Before the implementation of this federal program, which subsidizes the costs of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries in the U.S., not all older adults were offered a prescription drug benefit.