Press Release             

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Deane Beebe
Communications Director
212-204-6219
E-mail
Medicare Rights Center

May 3, 2006

Medicare Rights Center’s Congressional Testimony Outlines Eight Point Plan to Improve Medicare Drug Benefit

In Congressional testimony today the Medicare Rights Center outlined an eight point plan to improve Medicare’s prescription drug coverage, but warned that until Congress enacts a drug program administered by Medicare with negotiated drug prices, the program would continue to be “scandalously wasteful” and leave millions of older Americans without meaningful drug coverage.

Testifying before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, said, “Health security, not a health care lottery, is what people with Medicare require.”

He urged Congress to allow Medicare to compete against the private plans that now run the Medicare drug benefit. “Let the for-profit insurers compete with a Medicare drug benefit, one that fights for lower prices, keeps administration costs low and profiteering non-existent. Honest supporters of a market approach cannot fear competition, not even from Medicare.”

Among the reforms proposed by the Medicare Rights Center were:
1. Automatic enrollment for eligible impoverished Americans in the low income Extra Help Program;
2. Standardized benefit packages allowing meaningful plan comparisons;
3. An end to rampant “exploitative” marketing abuses;
4. Improved access to medications treating mental illness;
5. Elimination of the gap in coverage or “donut hole;”
6. Streamlined process for appealing private plan denials of needed medications;
7. Extension of the May 15th enrollment deadline; and
8. Delay of late enrollment penalties until 2007.

Mr. Hayes said these reforms would improve people’s access to needed drugs but added, “Even with these reforms, the drug benefit will continue to waste billions of dollars that could better be used to deliver a reliable and comprehensive drug benefit to people with Medicare through the Medicare program.”

Mr. Hayes’ testimony is available at http://www.medicarerights.org/HayesTestimony_5.pdf.

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