Rather than do the ‘reinvent the wheel’ thing, I’ll just refer you to other folks who have been “fact checking” the Administration’s claims about the 30 million who have “signed up for” Medicare Part D.
The net is this – out of the 21.3 million eligibles (not covered under some other Medicare or other Rx program), a bit over one-third have signed up for stand-alone Part D.
Matt Holt replays a Wall Street Journal article that (finally!) breaks down the actual enrollment stats by source (something Kate Steadman, Matt, and I have been blogging on for months…).
This makes me nuts because it will be used by some to make the point that governmental approaches to health care coverage do not work. And in this case, they’ll be dead on.
Insight, analysis & opinion from Joe Paduda
I understand what you’re saying here, but I think we both know that Part D is no more a government program than the Cimarron was a Cadillac (sorry if the analogy is a bit obtuse, but it fits, believe me). Part D is government licensing the brand name to private industry.