Bad Medicine
Gandalf Grey
Bad medicine
Big drug companies and private insurers with billions in profits at
stake will benefit more than the elderly if the U.S. Senate goes along with
the Republican plan that narrowly passed the House at dawn Saturday to
expand Medicare to help seniors pay for prescription drugs.
The elderly, especially the very poor, desperately need help to pay for
medicine. The bill that squeezed through the House by a 220-215 vote offers
some relief, but it also gives pharmaceutical companies a nearly free rein
to fleece taxpayers with exorbitantly priced drugs.
The bill would provide 40 million elderly and disabled Medicare
beneficiaries a government subsidy to purchase private insurance to help pay
for prescription drugs. It provides about $86 billion to encourage employers
to keep retirees in employer drug plans and $12 billion to encourage
preferred provider organizations to give Medicare-subsidized coverage to
seniors.
The catch, though, is that the bill gives big drug makers a protected
market but fails to place curbs on pricing.
A provision that would have allowed seniors to buy drugs from Canada,
where they are substantially cheaper, was removed from the bill. That means
Medicare beneficiaries will be forced to pay, and taxpayers to subsidize,
whatever prices the drug companies charge.
The bill does have some pluses besides helping seniors pay drug bills.
For the first time since Medicare started in 1968, beneficiaries with higher
incomes would pay higher premiums for their doctor coverage. It includes $25
billion to close the gap in Medicare reimbursement rates between urban and
rural hospitals and give rural doctors higher payments -- a provision that
would help Utah's low-income rural Medicare patients.
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Nevertheless, the bill would cost taxpayers at least $400 billion over
10 years, an expense the country can ill afford in a time of huge deficits
and the continuing conflict in Iraq. The daunting expense is even harder to
justify when more than 41 million Americans, including many young families
and children, have no health insurance at all.
Picking up the tab for high-priced medicines will force the deficit even
higher over the coming decade. If the Bush tax cuts become permanent, the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects annual deficits of at least
$150 billion through 2013.
Along with those concerns, some opponents of the bill are rightly
worried about a plan to establish six test projects where the traditional
Medicare program would compete with private insurers. In the past, such
privatization, in the form of Medicare HMOs, has led to higher premiums.
There is no doubt that seniors, especially those on limited incomes,
need help to pay for drugs. But expanded Medicare should be approved only if
it is combined with measures to cut the cost of drugs and rescind the Bush
tax cuts.
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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of
Iraq."
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,