The Truth On Part D Enrollment, Medicare Rights Center

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 13 May 2006 - 0:00 PDT

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Below is a statement by Robert M. Hayes, President, Medicare Rights Center

No amount of exaggeration can disguise two central facts: over 80 percent of impoverished people with Medicare eligible for a comprehensive drug benefit have not been enrolled; nearly 51 percent of the people with Medicare who had no drug coverage on January 1st, still have no coverage.

The Social Security Administration continues to report that just 1.7 million of the estimated 8.2 million people eligible for the low income subsidy have been enrolled. The Bush Administration has left behind the neediest Americans, the men and women who were supposed to benefit most from drug coverage.

Prior to the launch of the drug benefit, 17.7 million people with Medicare had no or only limited prescription drug coverage. Today, contrary to the Administration's flawed enrollment reports, about ten million of the 43 million Americans with Medicare continue to lack drug coverage.

The Bush Administration today has stated that 6 million people with Medicare lack drug coverage. But there are another 5.8 million people who the Administration recently decided to count as having drug coverage. These claims are without substantiation. These numbers include 3.2 million veterans, 2 million working aged seniors and 600,000 individuals with access to the Indian Health Service. In fact, many of these 5.8 million people do not have drug coverage and many others of them have signed up for Part D and are thus being counted twice. Even if we assume that half of the 5.8 million have some drug coverage through those other sources, by our conservative analysis about 10 million older adults and disabled Americans still lack drug coverage.

The drug benefit was launched not to benefit the insurance industry but to offer humanitarian assistance to the 17.7 million people with Medicare who lacked drug coverage. That 9 million of them-51 percent-still lack coverage today provides ample proof that Part D is failing to serve most of those whom it was intended to help.

Most tragically, over six million of the poorest Americans are still shut out from enrollment in the much heralded, sadly designed, low income subsidy.

Commitment to change and improvement, not self-congratulatory hyperbole, would be a more seemly Administration response to the reality facing older and disabled Americans.

The Medicare Rights Center is the largest independent source of health care information and assistance in the United States for people with Medicare.

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