A8 The Region The Boston Globe WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
used feature on the Medicare
website for seniors searching for
affordable insurance coverage
for their medicines. The legacy
plan finder allowed individuals
or their advisers to enter the
names and dosages of the drugs
they take and quickly calculate
which of the multiple Part D
policies available in their region
and pharmacy carries the low-
est annual out-of-pocket costs.
But that total-cost calculator
is missing in the redesigned
Medicare plan finder, which
went live on Medicare’s website
on Aug. 27 in advance of the an-
nual open enrollment period
that starts in October. Instead,
the new plan finder enables us-
ers to tally separately the costs
of premiums, deductibles, and
copays under different plans —
but not the total cost of each
one. That makes it much hard-
er for seniors to compare plans
and choose the cheapest.
“This needs to be fixed,” said
Ann Kayrish, senior program
manager for Medicare at the
National Council on Aging, one
of many parties that have inun-
dated Medicare officials with
feedback since it released its
new version. “It’s alarming that
the most used and useful sort-
ing tool isn’t in their new itera-
tion. We’re keeping the pres-
sure on.”
Julie Jennings, a broker at
the Sylvia Group in the South-
eastern Massachusetts town of
Dartmouth, said she uses the
plan finder’s total-cost calcula-
tor at least two or three times a
uMEDICARE
Continued from Page A
week to help clients entering re-
tirement to transition from
their employer’s insurance to
Medicare drug plans. “We just
put in all the meds and get the
total rates,” she said. “I could do
the math if I needed to. But it
would be difficult for the aver-
age consumer to add it all up.”
In a Web conference with
Medicare counselors on Thurs-
day, officials from the agency
that administers Medicare ac-
knowledged the criticism
they’ve received on the absence
of a total-cost calculator and
said they were working to add
that function in time for the
open enrollment period. That
period, running from Oct. 15
through Dec. 7, is when mil-
lions of newly enrolled and ex-
isting beneficiaries shop for the
cheapest drug policies, which
often change year to year.
Representatives from the
Centers for Medicare and Med-
icaid Services said their new
plan finder — the first big up-
date to the tool in a decade —
“was designed to be simple and
intuitive” for nearly 45 million
Medicare beneficiaries. They
said it offers many advantages
over the current tool, including
easier use on mobile devices
and a feature alerting users to
lower-priced generic versions of
their prescription meds.
“The redesigned Medicare
Plan Finder is another example
of how CMS is empowering
beneficiaries with price and
quality information to take ad-
vantage of lower rates and new
benefits,” CMS administrator
Seema Verma said in a state-ment in August.
In prepared responses to
questions from the Globe, the
CMS representatives said the
total-cost calculator “is a fea-
ture that has always been on
our list to include, but couldn’t
be completed in time for the
Aug. 27 public launch.” They
said they received feedback on
the plan finder revamp from
“stakeholder groups” and
shared prototypes with some
Medicare beneficiaries.
The legacy plan finder will
remain on Medicare’s website
alongside the new one until the
end of September, they said, en-
abling users to get used to the
new one.
CMS officials declined to be
interviewed about the process
and rollout.
Justin Lubenow, executive
vice president at the Moore-
stown, N.J., insurance brokerage
firm Senior Advisors, called the
plan finder upgrade “a poor tech-
nology with good intentions.”
But if its flaw isn’t corrected, he
warned, “the government’s going
to get slammed by phone calls
during open enrollment. This is
significantly less useful without
the total cost” function.
The absence of a total cost-
calculator is one of a number of
concerns that a range of critics
have expressed about recent
Medicare policy changes.
Some suggest a new require-
ment that beneficiaries shop-
ping for a new plan set up an
online My.Medicare account to
store their medication lists
could potentially compromise
privacy. They also pointed outthat many older and poorer
Medicare beneficiaries may not
have access to a computer and
would need help creating on-
line accounts.
In a letter to Medicare ad-
ministrator Verma, four advo-
cacy groups — the Center for
Medicare Advocacy, Justice in
Aging, Medicare Rights Center,
and National Council on Aging
— also raised a host of ques-
tions about the process sur-
rounding the new plan finder
and whether federal officials
will have enough time to incor-
porate feedback before open
enrollment.
The plan finder upgrade has
emerged as a bugaboo for coun-
selors at free state Medicare as-
sistance programs operated out
of senior centers across the
country. (In Massachusetts, the
program is called SHINE, an ac-
ronym for Serving the Health
Insurance Needs of Everyone.)
The advisers worry that any de-
lay in adding the total-cost fea-
ture to the new tool will greatly
add to the time it takes them to
assist beneficiaries, limiting the
number of people they can help.
“This new plan finder makes
it more complicated and time-
consuming for people like my-
self,” said Howard Houghton, a
volunteer at the state health in-
surance assistance program in
Harrisonburg, Va. “The total
cost is what people need to
know so they can budget.”Robert Weisman can be reached
at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter
@GlobeRobW.former mayor Ray Flynn. “It
was a real social environment.
Everybody was part of this Bos-
ton tradition: the old timers
and the young people. Journal-
ists and politicians.
“You could learn more
about Boston politics in Doyle’s
than you could at the John F.
Kennedy School of Govern-
ment at Harvard.’’
Part of that history lesson is
a tough course in economics
that Burke has glumly learned
to master over the last few
years. Lately, he said, business
has been quiet. And the cost of
business has grown prohibi-
tively expensive.
“It’s very sad,’’ he said. “I
grew up here and I’ve had a
wonderful childhood. It’s been
my identity as long as I can re-
member. It’s a terrible thing
and I’m as sad as I can be. But
the real estate in Jamaica Plain
is as high as it’s going to get.
And I can’t afford to stay here
anymore.’’
A purchase-and-sale agree-
ment filed with the city in early
August indicates that Davio’s
Northern Italian Steakhouse
intends to buy Doyle’s seven-
day, all-alcohol license for
$455,000, using it for a large
restaurant planned for the land
on which Anthony’s Pier 4 once
sat in the Seaport District.
Steve DiFillippo, the CEO of
Davio’s, said the license deal
was set up by a broker.
“I didn’t even know it was
Doyle’s,” DiFillippo said Tues-
day. “I am a Boston guy. I am a
huge Doyle’s fan.”
Burke said he owns the busi-
nessandtheliquor licensebut
not the property, which is
owned by his uncle, Eddie.
Burke is 50 years old now.
He’s the father of four — two
boys and two girls — and his
youngest, Mary Ann, turns 8 at
the end of the month.
“I’m lucky,’’ he said. “I’m go-
ing to get to know my wife and
kids a little better. A place like
this is always on your mind. I’m
going to take a little time off.’’
It’s been a long time coming.
And before they turn off the
lights — and the taps — there
will be plenty of time for old
war stories about a place that
once upon a time was a front
for a bootlegging business.
uFARRAGHER
Continued from Page A
What kind of stories? Stories
like this:
ªThat time in 1964 when
three guys rushed in, an-
nounced a holdup, and fired a
bullet into the wall near a pic-
ture of Paul Revere. The bar-
tender was pistol whipped. Bil-
ly Doyle, a former cop who was
crouched behind the bar, shot
and killed one of the robbers.
Justifiable homicide, the police
report said.
ªThe gradual evolution
from workingman’s pub to a co-
ed tavern. “The women started
after the First World War when
they reluctantly came in to get
their husbands out after Mass,’’
Gerry Burke, the current own-
er’s father, told the Jamaica
Plain Historical Society in No-
vember 2005. “They became
more acceptable in the early
1960s. Remember, this was a
tough neck of the woods.’’
ªOr how the place became
a magnet for politicians
throughout the decades, in-
cluding mayors from John
“Honey Fitz’’ Fitzgerald and
James Michael Curley to Kevin
H.WhiteandThomasM.
Menino. Tables and booths
have been dedicated in their
honor.
Here’s how one Globe col-
umnist described the place in
2005: “Doyle’s is, on any given
night, a crazy salad of hacks,
Hibernians, women’s softball
teams, rugby scrums, Pilates
instructors, and Martians
sporting tongue studs, along
with the locals.... It’s the polit-
ical bar in Boston for those who
revel in the art rather than
practice it.’’
But plenty of practitioners
showed up as Election Day ap-
proached. Or faded in the dis-
tance.“I called up Kevin White one
day out of the blue,’’ Flynn re-
called. “He was retired and I
was mayor. I said, ‘Do you want
to go for a ride?’ After we rode
around for a couple of hours, I
said, ‘Come on, we’ll go over to
this neighborhood bar in JP.’ So
we went over to Doyle’s. Tom-
my Menino was there. Some-
one took our picture. Kevin re-
ally loved it.’’
You never really knew who
you were going to bump into,
he said.
“I’ve brought in presidents
and prime ministers and cardi-
nals,’’ Flynn said. “And before
you knew it, everyone would be
coming up talking to them. I
brought Bill Clinton over there
on a Sunday morning for
brunch for a short while. It was
a feeling of good will. And
that’s what we need more of in
our city. Not just some big,
high-rise office buildings.’’
There’s nothing big, or high-
rise, about Doyle’s.
So you can imagine that a
big and long Irish wake will
soon take shape in Jamaica
Plain. Actually, it’s already be-
ginning.
On Tuesday, Frank Duggan
said he was far from surprised
to hear about the closing as he
walked by the barroom. The
63-year-old Hyde Park resident
grew up just a few blocks away,
and he took a guess about what
would rise in the pub’s place.
“Condos. What else is
around here?” Duggan said.
“There’s not going to be any-
place to go.”
Word spread quickly among
patrons both inside and outside
the bar Tuesday afternoon, and
many rushed over after hearing
that Doyle’s had become the
latest casualty of JamaicaPlain’s transformation.
“With all the construction
and all the crazy things going
on here, I’m not surprised,”
said Juan Carlos, who lives
nearby. He brought his 3-year-
old daughter, Cataleya, for din-
ner, and said the staff took the
time to remember her name af-
ter she visited before. “There
are a lot of new places opening,
butthere’snothinglikethis.
This is history here.”
Burke recalls that his earli-
est memory is helping his fa-
ther get ice “when I was still too
small to even carry a bucket.’’
“I met Ted Kennedy in
here,’’ he said. “I met Ray Flynn
in here. Elizabeth Warren.
Scott Brown.’’
That list goes on. And it’s a
long one. Some of it is written
on the walls of the old place on
Washington Street that used
to be the old Willow Athletic
Club.
Time is running out, but
there will still be time to tell
stories about the place.
Stories about the days when
the Burkes ran the place. Ed-
die, the nighttime host, living
in the family home on Myrtle
Street. Gerry, the food manag-
er, and daytime host. And Bill,
the drinks manager and chief
bartender.
All of that, like the old Gar-
den and the elevated Express-
way, soon slipping into lore.
And into Boston’s history.Jaclyn Reiss, Travis Andersen,
Larry Edelman, and Andy
Rosen of the Globe staff
contributed, as did Globe
correspondents Jeremy C. Fox
and Max Jungreis. Thomas
Farragher is a Globe columnist.
He can be reached at
[email protected].ers on additional fraud and em-
bezzlement charges.
State Police spokesman Da-
vid Procopio said the agency
immediately in June told prose-
cutors about the records and
made them available for review.
Procopio said the value of the
documents to ongoing investi-
gations remains unclear. He de-
clined to say how many records
were found or which years they
covered, saying “the discovery
is still being inventoried.”
The revelation represents
another black eye for the belea-
guered State Police force, which
has been admonished by US At-
torney Andrew E. Lelling, Gov-
ernor Charlie Baker, and others
for trying to destroy docu-
ments.
Forty-six troopers have been
implicated in a payroll fraud
scheme that included writing
phony tickets and falsifying
timesheets to collect overtime
payforhourstheynever
worked. Eight troopers have
pleaded guilty to embezzle-
ment. Two others face charges.
The types of records uncov-
ered this summer have been
key to the ongoing state and
federal criminal probes.
In May, US District Judge
Mark Wolf lambasted prosecu-
tors for not going back further
to examine the roots of the
years-old scheme. Prosecutors
called it impossible because
State Police officials had de-
stroyed older records as part of
routine efforts to get rid of dat-
ed documents.
Prosecutors had subpoe-
naed agency copies of traffic ci-
tations, or copies of the tickets
that are intended to stay with
the department, according to
Procopio. Most of the pre-
copies had already been de-
stroyed at the time of the re-
quest, he said.
But in early June, internal
investigators learned there
were numerous duplicate cop-
ies, or “court copies,” of those
same citations, according to
Procopio. The duplicates had
been set aside by court officers
in case motorists appealed their
tickets, and were stored in a dif-
ferent location, Procopio said.
The discovery prompted in-
ternal investigators to search all
of the barracks within the now-
disbanded Troop E. The search
turned up a trove of records, in-
cluding “court copies” of cita-
tions, magistrate hearing
schedules, activity logs, and
sign-out sheets for citation
booklets, Procopio said. The
files were transported to head-
quarters and “remain in a se-
cure location,” he added.
At the time of the discovery,
the agency had been under
state and federal scrutiny for 18
months and was a full 2½ years
into its own internal audit.
Asked to explain the oversight,
Procopio said the department’s
priority had been to gather
agency copies “as specifically
requested by prosecutors.”
Procopio called the depart-
ment’s own audit and investiga-
tion into Troop E overtime dis-
crepancies “thorough, methodi-
cal, and meticulous.” He noted
the department referred to
prosecutors the names of 46
troopers it had linked to the
scheme.
“The department is also re-
viewing the documents to de-
termine if further internal ac-
tion is required,” Procopio said.
Spokeswomen for Lelling
and Attorney General Maura
Healey declined to comment,
citing ongoing investigations.
A Baker spokeswoman re-
leased a statement saying the
governor “is pleased that the
department’s continued efforts
to implement department-wide
reforms led to securing these
documents.”
The convictions of eight
troopers have laid bare a wide-
spread fraud scheme in which
officers and their supervisors
wrote bogus citations to meet
unconstitutional ticket quotas,
falsified paperwork, and de-
stroyed documents to cover up
their absences — actions that,
prosecutors said, point to sys-
temic cultural problems and lax
oversight at the agency.
So far, prosecutors have
charged troopers for alleged
embezzlement in 2015 anduSTATE POLICE
Continued from Page A2016, though prosecutors said
the scheme may have stretched
back much further.
Assistant US Attorney Mark
Grady previously said the over-
time programs abused by
troopers dated back more than
a decade, but examination of
the issue was thwarted by a lack
of documentation.
The State Police have come
under fire before for destroying
records that could show wrong-
doing. While under scrutiny,
they’ve also tried to destroy de-
cades of payroll, attendance,
and personnel documents.
Legal specialists questioned
how the State Police didn’t find
the newly discovered docu-
ments until just a few months
ago.
“How do you misplace re-
cords that aren’t really all that
old?” said Stephen Weymouth,
a criminal defense attorney. “It
looks to me like inefficiency by
the state.”
News of the document dis-
covery was included in a foot-
note in a sentencing memo
filed in federal court last week
byanattorneyforformertroop-
er Daren DeJong, who is await-
ing sentencing on his guilty
plea to an embezzlement
charge.
Attorney R. Bradford Bailey
noted that the boxes of records
uncovered at least some addi-
tional, alleged wrongdoing by
his client. In the filing, Bailey
suggested that come sentenc-
ing, the judge should not con-
sider DeJong’s conduct as out-
lined in 2013 and 2014 files,
citing concerns about the docu-
ments’ reliability and the cir-
cumstances surrounding how
they were discovered.
Bailey, when reached by the
Globe, declined to comment.
Another attorney represent-
ing a trooper charged in the
scandal expressed surprise
about the unearthed docu-
ments.
“It’s hard to know, or hard to
imagine really, that they
couldn’t find the records be-
fore, but now they can find
them,” said the attorney, who
spoke on the condition he not
be named for fear of harming
his client’s case. “It’s really hard
to think of a legitimate reason.”
The attorney, like other legal
experts, said it’s possible —
though unlikely — that troopers
who have already been sen-
tenced would face additional
charges.
But, the attorney noted, the
revelations could affect “some
people on the bubble, who
weren’t charged before because
their conduct wasn’t egregious
enough.”
In June, the US Department
of Justice’s Boston office put out
a bid proposal seeking vendors
to scan and make electronic
copies of approximately 10 box-
es filled with about 25,
State Police traffic tickets.
The work was to be done on-
site at the State Police head-
quarters in Framingham and
“must be kept confidential,” ac-
cording to the bid. The result-
ing DVDs were to be turned
over to one of the lead federal
prosecutors on the overtime
fraud cases.
An official at the company
that was awarded the $17,
contract declined to comment.Matt Rocheleau can be reached
at matthew.rocheleau@
globe.com. Follow him on
Twitter @mrocheleMedicare costs getting harder to figure
State Police say
missing documents
have turned up
JOHN TLUMACKI/FILE‘Howdoyou
misplacerecords
thataren’treally
allthatold?It
lookstomelike
inefficiency
bythestate.’
STEPHEN WEYMOUTH,
a criminal defense attorneyTaps for
another
piece of
Boston
JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF
“You could learn more about Boston politics in Doyle’s than you could at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard,” said former mayor Ray Flynn.