Health Insurance Daily

On Your Mark...Get Set...For Medicare’s New Drug Benefit

As soon as Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law 40 years ago, his administration went into overdrive to sign people up. The effort to urge everyone 65 and older to buy into the voluntary part of the program—insurance for doctors' services at $3 a month—was so extensive that "we even had the Forestry Service looking for hermits in the woods," says Robert M. Ball, then Social Security commissioner, who implemented Medicare.

Within a year, 95 percent of older Americans had enrolled.

Another massive outreach campaign is now under way, as President Bush and his top officials tour the country to talk up the new Medicare coverage for prescription drugs that starts Jan. 1.

They describe the program—the biggest expansion of benefits since Medicare began—as "a good deal" and predict that next year about 30 million of today's 42 million beneficiaries will receive drugs either from a Medicare drug plan or from employer coverage subsidized by Medicare.

For more information on this article, click on AARP Bulletin.

posted by Mike @ 2:40 PM