Sun City Center, Fla. – President Bush has heard pleas for an extension of the deadline to sign up for new Medicare drug coverage from lawmakers, seniors advocacy groups and finally two women in his audience Tuesday. He has rejected them all.
“Deadlines are important,” the president said at a retirement community, less than a week before the last day for most seniors and the disabled to enroll in the program without facing higher prices. “Deadlines help people understand there’s finality, and people need to get after it.”
The new program allows 43 million Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in a private plan that will subsidize the cost of their prescription medications. With about 37 million people now either signed up or automatically enrolled, federal officials from Bush on down have engaged in an all-out push to spread the word to those remaining and help them navigate the Byzantine process of choosing a plan by Monday.
“We want people to understand there are really good benefits,” the president said. “If you haven’t looked at the program, take a look.”
Bush’s aggressive promotion of the Medicare benefit – and his refusal to push back the deadline – might be as much about politics as about policy.
The White House and congressional Republicans are hoping that the glitches of the program’s early days and the confusing sign-up process will have faded to a distant memory by the fall midterm elections, replaced by widespread satisfaction with having help from Medicare with prescription drug costs for the first time.
For now, though polls show most who enroll are happy with the insurance, many seniors and those trying to help them still are complaining about the program’s complexity.
