HHS Announces Nearly 24 Million Now Have Prescription Drug Coverage

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HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced today that nearly 24 million seniors and people with disabilities now have prescription drug coverage, including more than 2.6 million Medicare beneficiaries who signed up for the new stand-alone coverage in the last 30 days. This number comes on top of the 1 million who enrolled in stand-alone plans in the first 30 days of the initial enrollment period, which began November 15, 2005. "Enrollment in the new Medicare drug benefit is exceeding our expectations and keeping us on track to reach our goal of 28 to 30 million enrollees in the first year," said HHS Secretary Leavitt.

"While most of the 2.6 million new enrollments occurred with the enrollment surge at the end of December, people with Medicare have continued to sign up steadily since then," said Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., adminstrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The online enrollment center at www.medicare.gov has been processing an average of over 20,000 enrollments a day through the end of last week.

The overall enrollment figures as of January 13 are:

Stand-alone Prescription Drug Plans: about 3.6 million (2.6 million since December 13).
Medicare/Medicaid: 6.2 million (including 600,000 in Medicare Advantage plans).
Medicare Advantage: 4.5 million (plus 600,000 Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries).
Retiree coverage: About 6.4 million retirees are in employer coverage that is subsidized by the Medicare retiree drug subsidy. Additionally, about 1 million retirees are in employer coverage that incorporates or supplements Medicare prescription drug coverage. Another estimated 500,000 retirees are continuing in coverage that is as good as Medicare's.
TRICARE/ FEHB retirees: 3.1 million.

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