Salt Lake Tribune: Bad medicine

[Sean Reynolds]

This was in today's Salt Lake Tribune.

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.

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.

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Nov/11242003/opinion/113998.asp
----------

Rescind Bush's tax-cut? NEVER! ;-)

[ermoore]

1. Your love is like bad medicine . . .

Bad medicine is all I need.