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Medicare Drug Program
Medicare Estimates 90 Percent Now Covered for
Prescription Drugs
CMS issues statement
detailing final week's activities
May 17, 2006 The Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services says about 38 million Medicare beneficiaries are now
covered by the prescription drug program after strong enrollment
activity prior to the May 15 deadline. In 2005, 42.5 million people were
covered by Medicare: 35.8 million aged 65 and older, and 6.7 million
disabled, according to the recent Trustees report. This would indicate
somewhere around five million do not have prescription drug coverage. CMS
estimates 90 percent are now covered.
Following is the statement from CMS on final
week activities.
Hundreds of thousands of people with Medicare took
action on May 15 to enroll in Medicare prescription drug plans before
the close of the initial enrollment deadline, which ended at midnight
May 15. There was also an unprecedented level of interest and
enrollment leading up to the 15th as evidenced by the thousands of local
enrollment events, more than 2.2 million calls to 1-800-MEDICARE,
historic level of online enrollments and more than 15 million page views
on www.medicare.gov.
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Based on 872,000 enrollments from last week that
have already been processed, as well as clear indications of strong
enrollment activity in the final days before the deadline, significantly
more than a million additional beneficiaries have Medicare drug coverage
since our last announcement of more than 37 million beneficiaries with
coverage on May 9.
As a result, while we are still tabulating final
enrollment numbers, more than 38 million people with Medicare --
representing more than 90 percent of all beneficiaries -- now have
coverage for prescription drugs.
Enrollment Update
● Overall: Since the last announcement on May
9th, 872,000 new applications have already been processed. This number
does not reflect the last-minute enrollment surge that occurred over the
last few days. Consequently, with hundreds of thousands of additional
enrollments since that time, well over a million more beneficiaries will
have coverage once all applications have been fully processed.
● We do not yet have numbers tabulated to
reflect increased activity over the final weekend or online enrollments.
● Plans are submitting enrollment records ahead
of a payment cutoff date today, and a second cutoff date next week.
In addition, some beneficiaries who called at peak times are receiving
return calls over the next several days to complete their enrollment.
● Online Enrollment: Since November 15, 2005,
more than 3.7 million people with Medicare have enrolled online. This
includes over 500,000 online enrollments since May 7, 2006 that are not
yet reflected in overall enrollment counts.
● Online enrollment activity for Monday, May
15th was extraordinary, reaching 143,875 individual enrollments. This
is the largest single day online enrollment total since November 15,
2005.
● Over the weekend leading up to May 15th,
online enrollment activity reached 57,494 individual enrollments four
to five times greater than any other weekend in 2006.
● The
www.Medicare.gov
server, which was enhanced to quadruple capacity in anticipation of the
May 15th deadline, met the unprecedented level of demand readily.
Call Centers
● Volume of calls to 1-800-MEDICARE and use of
the online enrollment center reached record levels on May 15th . This
level was 58 percent higher than any other period of operation. More
than 640,000 calls were handled on May 15th with an average wait time of
12 ½ minutes. Moreover, the average call times for the week ahead of
the May 15th deadline was less than 4 minutes.
● In anticipation of unprecedented call volume,
we staffed 1-800-MEDICARE with over 6,000 customer service
representatives and supplemented with hundreds of our own expert staff.
In addition, we put in place a back-up program that allowed
beneficiaries to leave their name and phone number and receive a call
back to enroll without a penalty.
Online Support
● Use of the online enrollment center also
reached an all-time high on May 15th, with an average of over 40,000
users accessing the website at any given time. At peak times during
the day, over 50,000 active users were accessing the web site without
difficulty.
● Due to a quadrupling of server capacity at
www.Medicare.govin
anticipation of the initial enrollment deadline, the online enrollment
center was able to handle this unprecedented level of traffic smoothly,
with service maintained throughout the day.
Partner Activities
● Thousands of enrollment events were sponsored
by local grassroots partners over the last weeks of the enrollment
period. Since November 15th, our grassroots partners the network of
caring sponsored over 50,000 Medicare events and opportunities for
people to get personalized assistance.
● More than 40,000 volunteers in communities
across the country worked over this enrollment period counseling
beneficiaries and sponsoring events to help people with Medicare.
● Thousands of our partners conducted events
and stayed open over the weekend, and operated until midnight last night
to assist people in making their last minute decision.
Thanks to the national and local partners Medicare
is now a permanent grassroots program, which will now turn its efforts
to ensuring full use of the new prescription drug benefit and of the new
and important preventive benefits, which are now a part of Medicare.
● CMS is confident that for the first time
ever, 90 percent of people with Medicare have some kind of prescription
drug coverage.
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