Reply #18: Bush Admits Rocky Start to Drug Plan

[Beall]

Bush is in NY this week pushing the Part D plan. What do you think? Do you think this process will finally start to get easier for the elderly?

New York Times - Bush Admits Rocky Start to Drug Plan

By DAVID E. SANGER

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y., March 14 — President Bush tried on Tuesday to tamp down complaints by retirees and pharmacists about the start of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, acknowledging that problems plagued its early days.

In an echo of speeches conceding errors in the responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq reconstruction, and in which he insisted that the problems were being resolved, Mr. Bush told a group of pharmacists and Medicare participants here that he had expected that the program would have a rocky start.

"Any time Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting," the president said.

That was something of an understatement. The White House was flooded with complaints about retirees who could not obtain their drugs at the promised discount, and independent pharmacists from Texas complained in recent days to Karl Rove, the president's deputy chief of staff and political strategist, that they had been forced to give out millions of dollars of prescription drugs and had not been reimbursed.

Mr. Rove was on the trip to this city, not far from Rochester, which Mr. Bush hailed as an example of a place that had straightened out the problems. He noted several programs were available to explain Medicare options.

"Take a look," Mr. Bush said to a group with many retirees. "One of the reasons I have come is to ask people who are eligible for Medicare just to explore the options."

The president also traveled here to sidestep a potential landmine. Democrats, who voted overwhelmingly against the drug program and have called it a giveaway to drug companies, hope to point to the troubles in enrolling beneficiaries in November.

Mr. Bush took with him Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who has been working to resolve the troubles that many patients have encountered. "We saw some long wait times," Dr. McClellan said.

Calls to 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) had just a few minutes of waiting, he said. White House officials said the availability of generic drugs had lowered the projected cost of the program, which is run by private health plans subsidized by Medicare.