On the HorizonDoes Your Representative Really Support Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage?
By Robert Hayes, MRC News, Summer 2002Until the American people understand what three simple words mean–prescription drug benefit–the national disgrace of our nation’s elders going without needed medication will continue.
The problem is not that any of these three words is obscure. The problem is that public officials and policy analysts, some of whom are quite cynical and quite devious, have made these three words all things to all people. Which means they mean nothing.
Opponents of a comprehensive Medicare program for older and disabled Americans have quite cleverly turned the Congress, at least on health care, into what Charles Dickens christened as the Department of Circumlocution. Its role, Dickens taught, was to be sure that nothing, or at least absolutely nothing important, ever got done.
Want to find a supporter of a prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare?
Call either party, Republican or Democratic. The Republican House majority is on record in support of making prescription drugs affordable for senior citizens. So too has the Democratic Senate majority. So too, for that matter, has the Bush White House.
Advocacy groups of all political stripes make it sound like they support a prescription drug benefit. Paid advertisements will run all summer calling on voters to elect, or re-elect, candidates who support a Medicare drug benefit.
The sponsors of these ads include impressive sounding organizations like the United Seniors Association. Only if you ask, and ask repeatedly, do you find out that lobbyists for the multinational pharmaceutical companies pay for these ads. And only if you probe do you find out that the candidates being trumpeted support the most miserly of prescription drug benefits.
Why are multinational drug corporations against Medicare coverage of prescription drugs? It’s simple. They know it means fair pricing regulations.
Here’s how they get away with it. There is no consensus on what a prescription drug benefit means. So everyone can be for it.
The range of proposals for a prescription drug benefit runs from President Bush’s measly proposal to extend the Medicaid program and embellish discount cards, to the reasonably comprehensive benefit program endorsed by groups like AARP.
An absurd proposal pushed last spring by Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and the House Republican leadership, would require participants to pay $740 in costs (premiums, co-pays, deductibles) to secure $600 in prescription drugs.
By the way, you can probably picture what Congressman Thomas will tell a senior citizen at a town meeting who asks if he supports a prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare.
Anyone in the public arena knows there is one sure-fire way to stop progress: make it complicated. Opponents of affordable medicine for Americans have mastered that art, and then some.
That is why the Medicare Rights Center supports a straightforward, approach to prescription drug coverage for people with Medicare.
Extend the limited prescription drug benefit currently available under Medicare Part B to cover all necessary medications. Then add a low prescription drug premium and deductible to Part B, and place a 20 percent ceiling on co-payments.
Period.
Ask your elected representatives where they stand on that.
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