Salesman-in-Chief Promotes Medicare Drug Plan

With the initial enrollment period for the Medicare prescription drug plan more than half over, President Bush played the pitchman Tuesday, campaigning at a community meeting and senior residence to encourage participation in the program.

“Take a look!” the president said, his voice rising. “It’s a good deal.”

For 34 minutes, the president was the emcee of a traveling infomercial, calling on his experts to talk about the drug program’s benefits. The participants included the head of the Medicare program, the manager of a grocery chain’s local pharmacies, and a retired couple who had signed up for the program and had little but praise for it.

“Call 1-800-MEDICARE, or go to medicare.gov on the Internet,” Bush exhorted about 1,000 people in the gymnasium of Canandaigua Academy, a public high school in this city near Rochester in upstate New York. “You’ll see,” he said of the Medicare website. “It’s user-friendly.”

The president has made only rare visits to generally Democratic New York state, and this time he chose a district that is reliably Republican. His presentation offered a contrast to those by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is running for a second term this year and has made regular forays upstate in recent weeks, often dwelling on the problems that she says would-be participants have encountered trying to join the Medicare drug program.

The president has frequently presented the addition of the drug plan as the most dramatic overhaul of Medicare in its four decades. It is the signature domestic program of an administration that has focused most heavily on national security matters.

But navigating the ins and outs of the program, and deciding which of the drug insurance plans the private insurers offer best fits one’s needs, has confounded many potential participants. In California alone, seniors can choose from 47 plans.

In a letter sent to Bush on Tuesday, senior Democrats asked that he extend the enrollment period to the end of the year because, in the words of Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan, it was “needlessly complicated.”

The president defended the number of choices that potential beneficiaries faced, but acknowledged the confusion.

“Not only does it provide a prescription drug benefit, but it says seniors ought to have a menu of opportunity -- different options from which to choose to meet their needs,” he said of the new Medicare offering. “And that created some confusion initially. And I knew it would, as a matter of fact; I knew some seniors on Medicare really didn’t want to be confronted with any choice, and that the myriad of options would create a little confusion to begin with.”

But now, said Mark B. McClellan, the economist and physician who is the administrator of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the wait time on the drug plan’s phone lines is “way down,” to about two minutes.

“You can save literally thousands of dollars on drug coverage and be protected for the rest of your life,” he said. “Your coverage is never going to lapse, no matter what your drug needs are for the rest of your life.”

The administration projected in January 2005 that 29 million people would sign up for the program, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. By late February, nearly 16 million had enrolled; to meet the projected figure, participation would have to escalate rapidly, with another 13 million signing up before the enrollment period ends on May 15. It began on Nov. 15.

In addition to confusion among beneficiaries about the sign-up process, pharmacists complained in the opening days of the program about computer glitches and other difficulties in getting approval to fill prescriptions.

“The first days were pretty bumpy,” Diane Lawatsch, who manages four pharmacies for the Wegmans grocery chain, told Bush. But she said that dramatic improvements had followed.

Arriving in Rochester, Bush spent a few minutes with Jason McElwain, the student manager of a high school basketball team, who has autism. In February, his coach told him to suit up for a game, let him play, and in barely four minutes McElwain scored 20 points.

“I’ll call him J-Mac,” Bush said. “You can call me George W.” Asked how he had become aware of McElwain’s feat, the president said: “Saw it on TV and I wept, just like a lot of other people.”