Medicare Part D Deadline
Monday is the last day to enroll in Medicare part D. Have you or your loved ones signed up?
On Wednesday the bush administration said that about 37 million Medicare beneficiaries now have prescription drug coverage. That leaves around six million of the total 43 million who are eligible left who have not signed up.
And the government is pushing hard to get these holdouts enrolled—like 65 year old Henry Bowens waited to nearly the last minute to sign up for the new Medicare part D drug plan.
“I just heard it, I didn’t know nothing about it until I saw it on the TV,” says Henry.
77 year old Nora was a true procrastinator. She says, “I’m on dialysis three days a week. By the time I do my laundry and have time to take care of myself, I just let it go.”
While Monday is the last chance in a sense, you can still join a plan after May 15. But you will pay a higher monthly cost.
The penalty actually isn’t that much. It’s 1% of the average premium nationwide for each month that you’re not covered. And that’s about 3 dollars a year. But the longer you wait, the more it’s going to cost you.
There are resources on medicare.gov, the website for Medicare.
But the big criticism is that older individuals are not internet savvy.
Robert Hayes, President of the Medicare Rights Center, says, “The oldest people, the frailest people, the neediest people tend to be the less equipped to navigate complicated bureaucracies; probably in the history of domestic government programs there has been no program as complicated as this.” (Read more about Medicare Part D Deadline)
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