To Promote a New Drug Benefit, Marketers Are Using Some Old Scripts.

Reports that pop culture figures of a certain age or from a certain era in television are playing lead roles in a vast new marketing and advertising blitz. Likelihood that hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent trying to get millions of older Americans to sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefits that will effect January 1, 2006; Importance of the fact that the federally subsidized Medicare drug plans will be sold and administered by private industry; Efforts by insurers and pharmacy chains to grab shares of the new business; Description of tactics used to reach older people, such as daytime television advertising and direct mail; Concerns about communicating the complexities of the drug insurance plans.