Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Deane Beebe
Communications Director
212-204-6219
Medicare Rights CenterJuly 18, 2006
Complexity of Medicare Drug Benefit is Hazardous to Health, Expert Testifies at House Paperwork Reduction Hearing Washington, DC – The Medicare Rights Center termed an Office of Management and Budget estimate that it takes 30 minutes for a person with Medicare to apply for a prescription drug benefit plan "laughable and irrelevant."
OMB issues an annual review on the implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act, reporting on federal agency efforts to reduce the government-wide paperwork burden.
At a hearing today before the House Committee on Government Reform, Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a national consumer service organization, said that the Part D prescription drug program "causes far worse consequences than wasted paperwork."
"Paperwork reduction in the form of streamlined and straight-forward health assistance programs does more than save money. It saves lives," Hayes said.
Hayes testified that in selecting prescription drug plans "even the savviest of Medicare consumers have been confounded by the complexity of the marketplace and by the inaccurate and conflicting information available." He said millions of older Americans were forced to spend weeks trying "to understand the multiple layers of regulation, paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles that the Part D program has triggered."
Complexity has also prevented three of four poor Americans with Medicare from enrolling in the low-income subsidy program that shields older and disabled adults from many costs of the drug program, Hayes testified.
"Paperwork should be recognized as an often insurmountable barrier to needed health care and other human services," he said.
Robert Hayes’ testimony is available at www.medicarerights.org/testimony23.html.