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Millions Not Joining Medicare Drug Plan
Digna Tate, speaking to friends at the Educational Organization for United Latin Americans in Adams Morgan, said she found the sign-up process for the new subsidized Medicare drug plan intimidating.
(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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"It's not a rosy picture, and the news doesn't get better," she continued, warning that other projects, such as processing disability reviews, will be cut back as a result. "I won't try to kid you. This is going to be a very difficult year."
Social Security spokesman Mark Hinkle verified the authenticity of McMahon's e-mail but said it was a broader assessment of budgetary pressures. He characterized the Medicare difficulties as a "blip on the screen."
Not all of the $400 million spent by Social Security has been for the subsidized program, said Beatrice Disman, who is overseeing the agency's Medicare task force. Social Security has helped enroll some Pentagon retirees and had to devise a new computer system for deducting the Medicare premiums of wealthy retirees from their monthly Social Security checks. But the agency's primary assignment has been implementing the drug coverage for poor seniors.
For that, the agency bought computer systems, hired 2,500 employees, participated in 65,000 informational meetings and sent at least one letter to each of 19 million retirees who might qualify for the subsidized coverage. The goal, said Hinkle, was to cast as wide a net as possible.
The trouble is, said James Firman, president of the National Council on the Aging, it looks as though that net pulled in so many ineligible people that Social Security spent an enormous amount of time and money to process them. It has rejected close to 70 percent of applicants.
"The real problem is that 2 million to 3 million people that responded weren't eligible," Firman said. Social Security "probably spent $50 on each doing the proper follow-up," he added. "That's a very expensive mistake, especially when you think about the backlog."
The council provided a report to Social Security last spring outlining a recruitment strategy that Firman said would have enrolled millions more seniors and cost about $100 per person. They key involves using "trusted intermediaries," such as volunteers at community centers, to work individually with each client, he said. Mass mailings, group meetings and advertising are insufficient when dealing with a hard-to-reach population and an application that involves supplying both income and asset data, Firman said.
More than half of the applications were rejected because a person had more than $11,500 in assets, not including a primary home or car, Hinkle said.
"People get confused about reporting their assets," said Tom Paul, who is overseeing Medicare enrollment at UnitedHealth Group. "Not everyone knows the face value of their life insurance policy."
Despite the difficulties, several insurers are hoping they may be more successful than the government, said Reed V. Tuckson, a senior vice president at UnitedHealth Group. Legitimate criticism of the program, however, should not prevent low-income seniors from enrolling in what is virtually free drug coverage, he said. "If what gets lost is [getting] people enrolled, that would be a terrible outcome."
