Whitehouse: Republican Congress Let Time Run Out on Drug Coverage for Seniors Who Need It Most

Whitehouse: Republican Congress Let Time Run Out on Drug Coverage for Seniors Who Need It Most
More Than 46,000 in Rhode Island Have Yet to Sign Up for a Part D Plan

As tens of thousands of Rhode Island seniors who haven't yet enrolled in a Part D prescription drug program face penalties and delayed coverage as of midnight tonight, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse is traveling the state today to talk to seniors about their frustration over the failure of President Bush and Congressional Republicans to extend today's punitive and unnecessary deadline.

"George Bush and the Republicans in charge of Congress have failed seniors in Rhode Island and across the country," Whitehouse said. "This disastrous program is mind-bogglingly confusing for everyone - especially the seniors I've met who have been forced to cross-reference ten or fifteen prescriptions against more than forty plans with neither guidance nor explanation. Today's deadline is disgraceful, it's morally wrong, and it simply must be extended."

According to newly-released federal data, more than 46,000 Rhode Island seniors have not yet signed up for one of the 44 plans offered here. Nationwide, more than 12 million are not yet enrolled. Seniors who miss the deadline won't have another opportunity to sign up until November and will have to wait until January 2007 for their benefits to begin, automatically incurring a penalty of 7 percent of the national average monthly premium. A survey taken last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that tracks and analyzes health care policy and data, found that 45 percent of seniors did not know that today was the deadline to sign up for a new prescription drug plan. 47 percent did not know there was a penalty for late enrollment.

Whitehouse has repeatedly called on President Bush and Congressional Republicans to extend the deadline and lift the penalty. Today, he noted that incumbent Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee was not among the signers of a bi-partisan May 11 letter to President Bush asking that he direct Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt to extend the enrollment deadline through the end of the year and eliminate the financial penalty during that period. Rhode Island's senior Senator Jack Reed signed the letter, as did Republican senators Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, and Mike DeWine. In 2003, Senator Chafee sided with the Senate Republican leadership and cast a key procedural vote that cleared the way for passage of the prescription drug bill.

During his tour today, Whitehouse is holding discussions with residents of Park View Manor in Woonsocket, Mineral Spring Garden Retirement Homes in North Providence, and Harris House in Cranston. At a meeting with seniors in Scituate in February, he proposed a bold plan to scrap and immediately replace the disastrous existing prescription drug program with a simple, straightforward plan that gives Medicare the power to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, offers a Medicare-administered alternative to the private plans, and gives seniors the flexibility to switch plans if an insurance company changes the coverage it promised to provide.

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