WASHINGTON (AP) – The new prescription drug benefit is helping a large majority of Medicare beneficiaries, President Bush said Saturday while acknowledging that some patients have experienced problems.
“When you make a big change in a program involving millions of people, there are bound to be some challenges,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. “And this has been the case with the new drug coverage.”
Under the Medicare Part D program, about 43 million elderly or disabled Americans are eligible to enroll in a private plan that will provide prescription drug coverage, subsidized by the federal government.
Thanks to competition, the program is getting cheaper for beneficiaries and taxpayers alike, Bush said.
The average premium that beneficiaries pay is now expected to be about $25 a month instead of $37, as projected last year. The typical senior citizen will pay about half of what he used to spend on prescription drugs, the president said.
However, the government also estimates that several hundred thousand low-income beneficiaries had trouble making the transition to the new program. They had been getting their drugs through Medicaid, but that coverage ended Dec. 31. The government was supposed to automatically enroll them in a private plan, but many were not included in the transfer. Others were charged more for medicine than they should have been under the program’s rules.
Dozens of states stepped in on an emergency basis to keep their poorest residents from going without medicine.
“I was proud to support this bill, but this has been a fiasco,” Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said during a congressional hearing last week. “This has been botched and bungled every step of the way.”
Bush said the government has responded to early problems by ensuring that drug plans have more up-to-date information about their customers. Plans have also been told they should provide an additional 60-day supply of drugs for beneficiaries who need a particular medicine not covered by their plan.
“We have also acted to ensure that phone calls to the Medicare help line are now answered with little or no waiting time, and we’re working with insurers to help them do the same on their phone lines,” Bush said.
He said Americans who have parents on Medicare should encourage and help them to sign up for the drug benefit.
—
On the Net:
Medicare: http://www.medicare.gov
AP-ES-02-11-06 0327EST
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.