MEDICARE
THE PRAISES AND PITFALLS OF PART D
Health-care plan for seniors benefits only special
interest groups and is confusing and costly.
By Rep. Jim McDermott
WASHINGTON - Millions of senior citizens today are falling
into a hole created by legislation Republicans claimed would
benefit seniors when it was actually written by drug companies
who unabashedly favored themselves first and foremost.
Medicare Part D was a historic opportunity to provide real
relief for seniors to help cover the cost of prescription
drugs. But Republicans were more interested in special
interests than the common good, and so they forced through
Congress a deeply flawed bill that overwhelmingly fails the
American people.
The legislation includes a so-called doughnut hole — a gap
in coverage in which seniors continue to pay premiums but
receive no benefit. Once they use $2,250 in benefits, seniors
are left on their own, and coverage does not resume until they
have spent $3,600 of their own money. Seniors are forced to
pay the full cost of prescription drugs, and at the same time
they still have to pay a premium to their insurance company
every month.
The legislation neutralizes the enormous purchasing power
of 40 million seniors that would otherwise yield dramatic
savings in the cost of drugs.
The legislation channels implementation through hundreds of
private insurance companies that contract with Medicare. This
fragments purchasing power into hundreds of pieces, and the
legislation reinforces this artificial price support by
explicitly prohibiting the secretary of health and human
services from negotiating on behalf of seniors for lower drug
prices. Prices for drugs most often used by seniors have gone
up substantially since this program was created.
Medicare Part D forces seniors to choose among complex and
confusing plans by a certain date or be penalized 1 percent a
month for every month they postpone a decision. And the
penalty would apply forever.
Our nation’s seniors deserve and need help covering the
cost of their prescription drugs, which will total nearly $2
trillion over the next 10 years. The ability of pharmaceutical
advances to fight disease and prolong life is extraordinary —
and amazing advances are just ahead. To deny seniors access to
these benefits is simply unacceptable. And to take advantage
of seniors as Republicans have done through this
special-interest legislation is equally unacceptable.
When it comes to health care, Congress must have only one
special interest — the American people. So long as we permit
the private sector to govern the public sector, as was the
case in Medicare Part D, the American people will be short
changed.
That is exactly what is happening today with America’s
health-care crisis, yet the private sector bemoans every
effort to include every American in a health-care program,
even as the crisis worsens.
In the richest nation on earth, affordable health care
should be a right, not a privilege. Forty-seven million
Americans have no health insurance and millions more —
including many in Medicare — increasingly are finding that
even their share of health costs are unaffordable.
If nothing else, the failure of Medicare Part D should be a
wake-up call for the need to treat the health-care crisis as
any physician (and I am one) would treat a gravely ill
patient. All the Band-Aids the special interests have applied
have done nothing to heal the wound, much less cure the
problem.
America spends more money on health care than dozens of
other major nations, and yet Americans receive less. A rash of
recent stories report that U.S. companies now are offering
employees all-expense paid trips to other countries for
medical treatment because it is cheaper — even after factoring
in international travel and related expenses.
The conclusion is inescapable: Health care is on life
support, and it is time to administer effective treatment. It
is time for America to have universal health care that will
put the interests of the American people ahead of the special
interests.
©2006 Rep. Jim McDermott
Rep. Jim McDermott, a
Washington Democrat, is a member of the House Ways and
Committee.
|
