Health Secretary Touts Medicare Program for Seniors
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The secretary of health and human services, Michael Leavitt, rolled into town aboard a Medicare tour bus yesterday, to encourage senior citizens to sign up for the Bush administration’s prescription drug program before tonight’s midnight deadline.
Speaking to parishioners at two Manhattan churches as part of his “Sign-up-for-Medicare Part D” tour, Mr. Leavitt urged those who need the coverage to follow “three easy steps” to sign up.
Although the plan has been criticized by Democrats as dauntingly complex, Mr. Leavitt told the predominantly black congregations at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and the Primitive Christian Church on the Lower East Side that all they had to do is gather their prescriptions together, get their Medicare card, and then call the toll-free number. “Within half an hour, a person there will help you decide on a plan,” he said.
Mr. Leavitt said more than 37 million senior citizens, out of a total of 43 million, now have drug coverage, and he estimated that a half million more seniors will sign up by the deadline.
Two members of New York’s congressional delegation, Reps. Anthony Weiner and Carolyn Maloney, both Democrats, immediately called a press conference to criticize the program. Speaking at the Lenox Hill Neighbor House Senior Center on East 70th St., Mr. Weiner said that, to date, only one in 10 New Yorkers has signed up for Medicare Part D, while Ms. Maloney called for an extension of the deadline.
Although the vast majority of seniors have some form of drug coverage, some 6 million were already covered under other programs, including veterans’ programs and private insurance, and others were enrolled in government programs that automatically rolled over into the new prescription drug program. The Democrats’ figure of a 10% success rate reflects only those who voluntarily signed up under Medicare Part D.
The president of the Medicare Rights Center, Robert Hayes, estimated the number of seniors without meaningful prescription drug coverage at about 9 million.