Coconut Creek, Fla.– Like a pitchman promoting the last days of a big sale, President Bush today urged more Medicare recipients to sign up for the new prescription drug benefit before Monday’s enrollment deadline.
In a tour of the state with the highest percentage of senior citizens, Bush declared the benefit he signed into law “a fantastic opportunity for our seniors.”
“Coming down the stretch toward the May 15 deadline, we want everybody to sign up,” Bush said after watching people get enrollment help at Broward Community College. “We want people to understand that they are going to save a lot of money when it comes to prescription drugs.” Dozens of elderly people were gathered at the college, where government officials set up tents and tables with laptops to help them choose among the myriad plan options available.
Bush worked a courtyard where Frank Sinatra’s “Young At Heart” played on the loudspeakers, then went indoors, where people were working on laptops. He walked around giving handshakes and hugs to those who rose for his entrance, and greeted a man who remained sitting in a wheelchair with, “You look mighty comfortable.” Those who do not sign up by the May 15 deadline will have to pay a penalty to enroll, although there are exceptions for the poor.
Many lawmakers want to extend the deadline, but Bush has opposed those calls.
Bush was promoting the prescription drug benefit in three Florida cities before returning to Washington. He also planned to stop at a retirement community in the Tampa area today and give a speech on the program Wednesday morning in Orlando.
Bush’s promotional tour was part of more than 1,000 events that the government has staged nationwide this week as part of a final push to get people to sign up for the drug benefit.
The program is complicated and has caused confusion among some seniors. The Government Accountability Office said last week that federal investigators posing as senior citizens found that Medicare’s operators routinely failed to give callers accurate and complete information about the drug benefit.
The Bush administration noted that the study was conducted Jan. 17-Feb. 7 and said those problems had been fixed. The White House hopes it has recovered from the early glitches and that the program will be a selling point for congressional Republicans in the November elections.
The government has added 6,000 operators and quadrupled its computer capacity for enrollment in anticipation of a rush this week.
Nearly 43 million people are eligible to sign up for drug coverage through Medicare. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told The Associated Press Sunday that he estimates the number of beneficiaries with drug coverage through Medicare and other programs stood at more than 38 million.
