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Medicare Drug Program News
Medicare Drug Program Now Covers 90 Percent of
Senior Citizens
U. Michigan study says the poor as likely as the
rich to be covered
Aug. 9, 2007 - A report to be presented today will
show that more than 90 percent of Americas senior citizens now have
Medicare prescription drug coverage, up from just 75 percent in 2004.
And, according to the University of Michigan analysis, poor seniors are
as likely to have coverage as the rich.
The analysis compares drug coverage among a
nationally representative sample of 10,175 older Americans who were
interviewed both in 2004 and in 2006, when the Medicare Part D
prescription drug benefit started. The report is to be presented today
in Washington, D.C.
The interviews are part of the on-going Health and
Retirement Study, conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR)
and funded primarily by the National Institute on Aging,
"Despite widespread complaints that the Part D plan
is complex and confusing, our findings suggest that older Americans have
been able to make good choices," said U-M economist David Weir, who
directs the ISR Health and Retirement Study. Weir conducted the analysis
with U-M economist Helen Levy.
They presented their findings today at the National
Press Club, at a conference on "Challenges and Solutions for Retirement
Security" sponsored by the Social Security Administration and the
Retirement Research Consortium.
In 2004, nearly a quarter (23 percent) of Americans
age 65 and older lacked prescription drug coverage, Levy and Weir found,
compared with fewer than 10 percent in 2006.
The overall enrollment figures found in this study
were quite similar to those reported by the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, with roughly a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries
enrolled in stand-alone Part D coverage in 2006.
But using data from the Health and Retirement
Study, the researchers were able to go beyond the official statistics to
show that rich and poor were equally likely to sign up for Part D and
private coverage, and to lack coverage. Wealthy elders were much more
likely to have employer-provided drug coverage, but poorer seniors were
much more likely to get drug coverage through Medicaid.
Equally importantly, the researchers were able to
show that the most common reason people chose not to obtain prescription
drug coverage was that they used few or no drugs.
The study also asked people about the difficulty of
the decision process, and whether they were confident that they had made
a good choice. Only about one in six people reported that their decision
about whether to sign up for Part D was very or somewhat difficult. The
vast majority said the decision was not very difficult or not difficult
at all. The majority of Part D plan enrollees (69 percent) reported
feeling very or somewhat confident about having made the right decision,
and 86 percent of them planned to sign up again the following year.
While Levy and Weir caution that their analysis is
preliminary, the findings indicate that despite widespread criticisms,
the Part D plan has succeeded in boosting drug coverage for U.S.
seniors, especially for those who need it most. "Fewer than 10 percent
of seniors lack drug coverage now," Weir said. "And those with worse
self-reported health and higher use of prescription drugs in 2004 were
more likely than others to sign up."
Editor's Notes:
The Retirement Research Consortium consists of
three multidisciplinary centers: the Michigan Retirement Research Center
at ISR, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, and the
NBER Retirement Research Center
U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR):
www.isr.umich.edu
Michigan Retirement Research Center:
http://www.mrrc.isr.umich.edu/
ISR Health and Retirement Study:
http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/
Established in 1948, the University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest academic
survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and
application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most
widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Reuters/University of
Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies,
the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the
Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans.
ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60
nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the
Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China
and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium
for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest
computerized social science data archive. Visit the ISR web site at
www.isr.umich.edu for more information.
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