Medicare Matters aids Salt Lake. seniors

Nine computer kiosks manned by specially trained staff stood ready Wednesday to help some 50 people at Salt Lake City's Liberty Senior Center make sense of Medicare's complex new prescription drug coverage.

Unfortunately, the federal government's much-touted Web tool for selecting a drug plan was not in such a helpful mood.

The Web site, administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, kept crashing, leaving staff members with little to do at times but discuss the program in general terms and manually inspect seniors' health-care records and prescription drug needs.

The daylong event was to kick off My Medicare Matters, a national initiative sponsored by the National Coalition on Aging to help seniors sign up for drug coverage that begins Jan. 1. The Salt Lake event was one of six occurring this week around the country.

Salt Lake County aging-officials, who trained the local staff on the complexities of Medicare Part D, praised the initiative Wednesday.

"It's just another tool that we can use to get one-on-one screening for people," said Peter Herbertson, head of outreach for Salt Lake County Aging Services.

The agency has been doing its own outreach for several months, visiting area senior centers for similar individual counseling.

Enrollment for the drug coverage began Nov. 15 and continues through May 15. However, seniors who want coverage to begin on Jan. 1 must sign up by Dec. 31.

On the first day of the open enrollment period, Salt Lake County Aging Services received between 300 and 400 calls about the new program, Herbertson said. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported receiving 400,000 calls on Nov. 15 and an average of 200,000 per day since to its toll-free hotline, 1-800-MEDICARE was made available.

"We understand that this is a complicated program and really, really understand that it really needs to be a one-on-one counseling with people," he said.

Lisha Cordova took Wednesday off work to accompany her 69-year-old mother to the Liberty Senior Center to figure out the best plan for Maria Espicia Cordova and her 81-year-old husband.

Lisha Cordova had already visited the government's Web site for information but still found herself overwhelmed by the massive amounts of information.

"I thought 'OK, that was a great start, but let's bring them in for a personal one-on-one meeting,' " Cordova said.