Bush Trumpets Medicare Drug Plan as Deadline Nears

Six days before the enrollment deadline for the Medicare prescription drug program, President Bush visited a sprawling Florida retirement community Tuesday, acknowledging the concerns created by the program but emphasizing: “We want everybody to sign up.”

The president defended the multiple choices that have confused those eligible for the program, and he stuck by his decision not to extend its Monday deadline, which applies to all potential beneficiaries except those qualifying as low-income. Participants can still enroll after the deadline, but they will be charged higher premiums.

“We have changed Medicare for the better, but sometimes change creates anxieties,” Bush told about 250 people at Sun City Center, a 16,000-resident retirement community about 25 miles south of Tampa. “The more choices you have, the more likely it is you’d be able to find a program that suits your specific needs. In other words, one size fits all is not a consumer-friendly program.”

Despite long-standing complaints that the program is too complicated -- prompting repeated demands that the signup period be extended -- more than 30 million of the nation’s 43 million Medicare beneficiaries are now receiving Medicare-related drug coverage, the Department of Health and Human Services said Monday.

But the public attention that Bush is paying to the concerns about the drug program is again demonstrating the political weight of the nation’s senior citizens, whose complaints about the administration’s proposals to overhaul Social Security helped torpedo that plan last year.

In the end, said Dan Bartlett, Bush’s top communications advisor, “I think it’s going to be value-added” for Republican candidates. “As more and more people dispute the myths and see the benefits, it will sell itself,” he said.

Besides, said Bill Frenzel, a Republican who represented a Minnesota district in Congress and who now studies economic and political issues at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Bush’s low poll standings have him reaching for whatever issues may help.

“When you’re at 33% or 35% approval rating, you use whatever assets are available,” Frenzel said. “This one may not be a typical Republican asset for President Bush, but it’s out there and he should use it.”

In his remarks at Sun City Center, Bush said he anticipated the anxieties that followed the introduction of the program.

“I did know that there’d be some worries about having to choose from 40 different plans. But I thought it was worth it, because I know that 40 different plans here in Florida will mean that each individual can tailor a plan to meet his or her needs,” Bush said.

During a question period after the speech, a member of the audience pressed Bush to extend the deadline.

But Bush pushed back. “Deadlines are important,” he said. “Deadlines help people understand there’s finality, and people need to get after it, you know.”

Before visiting the retirement community, Bush stopped at a Broward County Community College campus in Fort Lauderdale, where a bus brought sign-up material to potential enrollees. This morning, he is planning to speak in Orlando at another Medicare program before returning to Washington.

While the president was in Florida, Families USA, a nonpartisan organization seeking to expand access to healthcare, issued a report in Washington saying that three out of four low-income seniors eligible for the benefit, known formally as Medicare Part D, were not participating in the drug program.

The questions surrounding the drug program may be drawing intense attention across the country as the deadline approaches, but perhaps nowhere to the extent they are in the communities on Bush’s itinerary.

“I know from South Florida,” said George Lemieux, the former Broward County Republican chairman who is now the campaign manager for Charles Crist, one of two candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. “These are bread-and-butter issues for seniors.”

These are uneasy days for key elements of the Republican Party in Florida -- a cause never far from the president, given the state’s role in securing his election in 2000 and the two terms his brother Jeb has spent as governor.

GOP Rep. Katherine Harris, who as Florida’s secretary of state played a pivotal role in the 2000 election recount, has lost favor with the Bushes. To their clear dismay, however, Harris formally filed notice Monday of her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

But Harris was at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa on Tuesday, standing at the steps of Air Force One to greet Bush. She and the president chatted for less than a minute, exchanged pats on the back, and went in separate directions.

Bush’s first stop in Florida on Monday evening was a party in Fort Lauderdale that raised about $800,000 for the reelection of Rep. Clay Shaw, a veteran Republican in a tight race.

Bush lost Shaw’s Broward County district in 2000 and 2004. State Sen. Ron Klein, a Democrat challenging Shaw, is trying to turn concern about the drug program into a winning issue.

Klein said in a telephone interview that with about 40% of the district eligible for Medicare, the decisions facing potential participants in the program are “causing a lot of unnecessary anxiety.”

“In a district like this, the president’s policy, and Shaw’s votes for it, do not sell well,” he said. The focus on the drug program and his opponent’s “alignment with the president makes for a national referendum race” in the district, he added.