Perspective               

Study Shows Drug Discount Cards Give Little Savings

When President Bush introduced his Medicare prescription drug discount card plan last summer, he said that card users could get discounts of 10 to 25 percent off retail prices. But a study by the General Accounting Office (GAO), a watchdog federal agency, casts doubt on that prediction. The GAO study found that prescription drug discount cards offer much smaller savings to people with Medicare.

The GAO reported that for people using discount cards, the average price for 12 of the most widely used brand-name drugs was $62.94, only 8.2 percent less than the average of $68.58 charged at retail pharmacies in Chicago, Seattle, and Washington. In some cases, GAO found that people using discount cards paid more for a prescription than people not using cards.

Prescription drug discount cards like the type proposed by President Bush do not provide prices that are much lower than those already available to people with Medicare. And even though President Bush's prescription drug discount card plan calls for using the buying power of millions of people with Medicare to negotiate discounts from pharmacies and drug manufacturers, it is not working. Congress and President Bush need to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare that would provide comprehensive coverage for an affordable price. The time to do so, as a matter of national security for Americans, is now.

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