Mary Agnes Carey, associate editor of CQ [Congressional Quarterly] HealthBeat spoke about the FY 2007 budget, the FY 2006 budget reconciliation, and Medicare’s prescription drug program. (Medical News Today)
Under the FY 2007, Medicare spending would be cut by $36 billion. Medicare payments would be reduced for certain long term care providers, including home health agencies. Carey also discussed a clerical error found in the FY 2006 budget reconciliation bill after it was passed in the House of Representatives and Senate. To learn more details about the error, see this story.
The audio and transcript of Carey’s comments are available at the Kaiser Network.
Despite the time, energy, and money spent discussing and debating the drug benefit, only 1.4 million people have signed up for the plan. Eight million people are eligible. From the Washington Post:
At this rate, by some calculations, the government is on track to spend about $250 for each person it enrolls, and even then it would have only 2 million poor senior citizens taking advantage of what is perhaps the most generous government benefit available today.
…But as in earlier efforts to register low-income Americans in programs such as food stamps or children’s health insurance, officials have encountered myriad challenges. The group of seniors eligible for the subsidies dubbed “extra help” tend to move often, may not speak English, sometimes suffer from mental impairments or do not want what they perceive to be a government handout.
Across the nation, the administration has turned to hundreds of community groups to help sign people up.
Follow the link to see samples of drug plans.
