The Republican senator from Arizona has repeatedly vowed to reduce Medicare Part D, which could lead to hundreds of thousands of Florida seniors losing their current prescription drug coverage. But his campaign isn’t worried that his views on the popular program will hurt him in the Sunshine State, The Hill reports.

Why? During a debate last week in Boca Raton, which was partly underwritten by AARP – the candidates didn’t field a single question about Medicare, the paper writes. Yet, there are 3 million Floridians on Medicare and about roughly half of them are signed up for the program’s prescription-drug benefit, according to the most recent official federal tally. The Republican primary in Florida, by the way, will be held tomorrow.

McCain has long argued that the bill that created the Part D prescription-drug benefit in 2003 went too far, covering too many people and putting too great a burden on taxpayers. McCain believes the drug benefit should only be available to low-income beneficiaries. Of the roughly 1.5 million Floridians enrolled in the drug benefit, only about 570,000 are considered “low income” under Medicare’s current definition. Beneficiaries with incomes up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level can qualify for generous additional subsidies under the drug benefit.

“I don’t think the drug benefit stands out,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who now advises McCain, tells The Hill. “People want to hear about new things. The economic issues that are pushing things right now is not (Medicare).”

Source: The Hill