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EDITORIAL: Medicare Maze: Congress Should Give Seniors Time to Choose

Posted on: Wednesday, 14 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Detroit Free Press, Detroit Free Press

Dec. 14--Before America's senior and disabled citizens start asking their doctors for anxiety medication, Congress ought to postpone the deadline for signing up for the new Medicare prescription drug plan.

Ideally, lawmakers would use the opportunity to refine this behemoth to make it easier to understand, navigate and manage, not to mention letting the government make bulk prescription purchases to drive down costs. That's probably too much to expect.

But responding to the confusion is not. Michigan volunteers would have to process 8,000 people a day to get the state's 1.5 million eligible Medicare recipients signed up by the May 15 deadline. Because it takes about an hour to help each person through the plan, the state can only handle about 400 calls a day. The folks who are seeking help can't even get it adequately.

This thing isn't going to work if people don't use it, and they can't use it if they can't figure it out.

To try to address this problem, the Medicare Informed Choice Act has been introduced in both houses of Congress. The proposal would extend the enrollment period until the end of next year without penalty. Currently, those who do not sign up by May 15 will pay a 1% premium increase for each month beyond that deadline. And there are several months after May during which they cannot sign up.

The bill would also allow Medicare recipients to switch drug plans once during the course of 2006. That gives those who made bad choices for lack of information -- which can be caused by the aforementioned difficulty in obtaining counseling -- or those whose medical conditions change an opportunity to pick a better plan. Currently, changes are only available at the turn of each year.

Congress is likely to go home without holding hearings on this measure, and truly unlikely to change the deadline until it looms closer, to pressure seniors to complete their signups.

And the sooner folks enroll, the more they'll get out of their benefits.

Still, a little extra time would be a great holiday gift for Medicare's overwhelmed clientele.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Detroit Free Press

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Source: Detroit Free Press

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