Seniors have until midnight on Monday to sign up for a plan by phone, over the Internet or by mail. Those who miss the deadline will have to wait until the next enrollment period in November. They also will pay a penalty added to their monthly premium, estimated at $1.75 for those who enroll in the next window.

One group helping Utah beneficiaries says it hasn't seen a dramatic increase in requests for assistance.

Peter Hebertson is outreach program manager for Salt Lake County Aging Services, which has been fielding calls and assisting people since the Nov. 15 opening date and had a lengthy waiting list at one point.

"I thought there would be a lot of people postponing it," he said. "But it's been steady and not the rush we thought we would see."

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has staffed up to handle an expected late "surge of interest," said agency head Mark B. McClellan at a news conference Monday. He said 6,000 customer service representatives working overtime have managed to keep wait times to under three minutes on the federal enrollment hot line 1-800-MEDICARE.

The agency also increased the capacity of its enrollment Web site at http://www.

medicare.gov, bracing for the possibility that healthy seniors with minimal drug needs are waiting until the bitter end, perhaps hoping for an extension.

Meanwhile, advocates say that the government has failed to reach low-income seniors who qualify for special discounts.

Utah's poorest and sickest automatically qualified for the discounts and were enrolled in a drug plan. But of 99,000 more Utahns identified as possibly qualified, only 18,000 have applied and 7,010 have been approved for the subsidies, confirmed Mike Fierberg, spokesman for the Denver office of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Fierberg downplayed the low enrollment, noting applications were mailed to people based on their Social Security incomes only.

"Some had pensions and other assets we didn't know about," he said.

As of April 18, 166,386 of Utah's 240,515 beneficiaries were enrolled in the Medicare Part D drug benefit.

Some have been unaware of the deadline. Sharon Sherman of Midway planned to meet last week with a My Medicare Matters employee to see if her parents, who live in an assisted living facility, could save money.

"I really was not fully aware of this," she said. "I'm a mother of three boys and my husband travels a lot. I don't have time to read the paper every day or watch the news."

Her mother has Alzheimer's disease and both her parents take medication for incontinence.

"I think the assisted living facilities should be sending out fliers to adult children too," Sherman said.