• Medicare woes Medicare woes From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 7 Older Americans stung by soaring drug prices are grateful for any small favor. That’s exactly what they got this week with the debut of new Medicare drug discount
• Medicare woes
Medicare woes
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 7
Older Americans stung by soaring drug prices are grateful for any small favor. That’s exactly what they got this week with the debut of new Medicare drug discount cards. The cards are an interim step in the government’s plan to roll out a Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2006. The cards offer discounts of “up to” 18 percent off the retail price of prescription drugs. But the average consumer will save less than that. The Associated Press found that discount card prices for Lipitor, Celebrex and other brand-name medicines were no better than prices consumers can find without discounts at online pharmacies. Those discount prices still are higher than prices in Canada. The discounts vary widely among the more than 70 cards on the market, promising a headache for consumers.
Drug discount cards aren’t really new. Drug store chains and membership groups have offered such cards for years, although they never were well-advertised.
The average senior citizen who pays $30 for the new Medicare-approved cards will save something on his or her drug bill, and that’s good. Low-income and disabled consumers will also get a $600 subsidy.
In Washington, politicians running for election will wave the cards to show they’ve done something for old people. President George W. Bush can say he has made good on a campaign promise, and the politicians all can point to the more generous plan due to kick in next year.
But they are unlikely to talk about what a complex and expensive plan that will be. The government could have provided better benefits more cheaply without driving our children into hock in the process.
The Bush administration sold this plan to Congress on an estimate that it would cost $400 billion over 10 years. Little did Congress know that the White House was sitting on a secret study showing the true cost of the drug benefit would be closer to $550 billion. The responsible move would have been for Congress to pass a tax to pay for the new benefit or cut spending somewhere else. Congress and the White House did neither, of course, so we’ll pile that $550 billion on top of our $7.2 trillion national debt and hand the bill to our children.
