WP,pg1: Success of Drug Plan Challenges Democrats: Medicare Benefit's Cost Beat Estimates

[DeepModem Mom]

Success of Drug Plan Challenges Democrats
Medicare Benefit's Cost Beat Estimates
By Lori Montgomery and Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page A01

It sounded simple enough on the campaign trail: Free the government to negotiate lower drug prices and use the savings to plug a big gap in Medicare's new prescription-drug benefit. But as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, they are struggling to keep that promise without wrecking a program that has proven cheaper and more popular than anyone imagined.

House Democrats have vowed to act quickly after taking power in January to lift a ban on Medicare negotiations with drugmakers, which they hope will save as much as $190 billion over a decade. But House leaders have yet to settle on a strategy and acknowledge that negotiation is, in any case, unlikely to generate sufficient savings to fill the "doughnut hole," the much-criticized gap in coverage that forces millions of seniors to pay 100 percent of drug costs for a few weeks or months each year.

Drug-company lobbyists, Bush administration officials and many congressional Republicans are preparing to block any effort to increase federal control over drug prices, saying the Medicare benefit is working well. They contend that instead of saving money, government negotiations could raise drug prices for all consumers while limiting choices for people on Medicare.

The Medicare drug benefit, one of the Bush administration's signature domestic programs, was created in 2003 and took effect in January. It has enrolled 22.5 million seniors, some of whom had no previous drug coverage.

Polls indicate that more than 80 percent of enrollees are satisfied, even though nearly half chose plans with no coverage in the doughnut hole, a gap that opens when a senior's drug costs reach $2,250 and closes when out-of-pocket expenses reach $3,600....The cost of the program has been lower than expected, about $26 billion in 2006, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The cost was projected to rise to $45 billion next year, but Medicare has received new bids indicating that its average per-person subsidy could drop by 15 percent in 2007, to $79.90 a month....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500919.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[madfloridian]

2. That is propaganda....with a capital P.

It is the most confusing mess you can imagine. Druggists, customers, doctors are pulling out their hair. We talk with people in those programs. That is just spin.

[Boo Boo]

7. Absolutely. The "beating estimates" con is a favorite of the Bush Admin. /nt

[nolabels]

3. People were once satisfied with the concept of the out-house also

http://www.sethwhite.org/summit%20camp.htm

The indoor crapper put an end to that literally :-)

[RamboLiberal]

4. I can see these bastard drug companies having a reprisal

against this happening in Medicare by ripping the rest of us off. Dems better be ready to go after them for price gauging if that happens.

[gumby]

5. The 'Washington Post' and the 'NYT'

have, without a doubt, proven themselves to be Class Warriors of the first order.

They are AGAINST The People of this country.

[bluestateguy]

6. "Polls indicate that more than 80 percent of enrollees are satisfied"

First of all I have seen so such polls at all, and the article never cites even one. Secondly, they did not bother to poll the Medicare recipients who were so intimidated by the program that they did not enroll. Or all of the Medicare recipients who found that they would not save a dime and thus did not enroll.

A textbook example of corporate media tripe, and yet another reason why media consolidation has to be on the agenda for this Congress.

[rodeodance]

8. lots of ideas here from Dems:

For now, it is not clear how aggressively Democrats are willing to push price negotiation. Ideas range from simply repealing the ban on negotiations -- which would accomplish little if the Bush administration refuses to negotiate -- to creating a separate, government-run Medicare drug program with strong negotiating power.

Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Calif.), who is in line to become chairman of a key health subcommittee, said he prefers a middle path, with Medicare setting ceilings from which private insurers could negotiate downward.

But Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the incoming Senate Finance chairman, is cool to the idea of government negotiation, and has committed only to holding hearings to "determine what the result would be of eliminating" the no-negotiation clause.

W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the drug lobby will "aggressively defend" the current plan. But John C. Rother, policy director for AARP, the powerful lobby for elderly Americans, said he has no doubt that the next Congress will give government some role in negotiating Medicare drug prices.

"This is an idea that's favored by 90 percent of the American public," Rother said. "It's not like you have to convince the American public that this is a good idea."

Staff writer Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.

[NashVegas]

9. Popular With Whom?

Not my 78 year old next-door neighbor, that's for certain. My 76 year old Mom's not too keen, either.

Funny how a headline changes. Two days ago, it was along the lines of, "pharms scrambling to find a strategy for a Dem congress."

I guess this is the strategy? "Stay the course."

[zanne]

10. "Polls indicate"

Sorry; that isn't good enough for me. Which polls indicate? How many "polls" are there? Who was polled? What polling companies performed these polls? When an article says something like "polls indicate", I always smell something bad.

[Joe Bacon]

11. More lies from the WHORESHINGTON POST

Pravda on the Potomac is at it again! the overwhelming majority of seniors I talk with are pissed off at Medicare"D". they believe they are getting ripped off, and they are.

No paper lies for the Republicans more than the Post does.

[Vinca]

12. Assuming the numbers are correct, what about the 20%?

Surely, that's a significant number of people suffering. As for the cost of the program - it would be much, much cheaper with negotiated drug prices as long as the insurance companies and big pharma don't conspire to make up the difference with increased policy fees. If there was a way to throw big oil into the mix, we'd have a roster of the greediest industries in the country in charge of helping the elderly. Wow.

[FlaGranny]

13. After researching all the

options for the freestanding Medicare drug plans, none of them would have pleased me. But I belong to an HMO and the HMO has an excellent plan. As long as you are taking generics on their plan, there is no cost at all, even in the "doughnut hole." Fortunately my husband and I do not need any brand name drugs. So I guess I'd be one of the supposed 80%, but if it were not for our HMO's plan, I would be in the 20%. Of course, we all know the bad points of an HMO and we just have to put up with it because can't afford medical care on Medicare and Medigap policies are out of sight as far as costs go for most seniors. All of our copays have been raised this year, in fact doubled, but from $5 to $10 for specialists and from $25 to $50 per day for hospital stays (only for the first 10? days). Not too bad. Our HMO is much better than we had before we turned 65 - which was no coverage at all for anything.

[wellstone dem]

14. In Minnesota, the poorest folks ended up paying more than they

did before the Medicaire Drug program. This is because on medicaid in Minnesota, there was a limit of $20 per month for total co-payments. There is no limit for the MDP.

[xchrom]

15. 80% are satisfied?

i am surrounded by seniors and not one is satisfied.

many americans may have voted on the iraq issue -- but seniors i know voted on the health care, pharma, insurance issues.

those issues DRIVE the lives of many, many seniors.