Dr. Quentin Young on the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill
For Immediate Release
Contacts: Quentin Young MD (312) 782-6006
December 11, 2003
Statement of Dr. Quentin Young on the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill
National Coordinator, Physicians for a National Health Program
The “Medicare reform” legislation signed into law by President Bush on December 8 is a sham and must be repealed at once. Medicare needs a straightforward full drug benefit, based on hard negotiations for the best prices from the drug companies. The current bill not only provides scrooge-like benefits; it also prohibits Medicare from adopting effective measures to contain escalating drug costs (rising 17% a year), assuring that seniors will soon be worse off under the bill than they are today.
The bill’s benefits are ephemeral. It actually worsens the position of millions of seniors and permanently disabled Medicare beneficiaries (such as persons with end-stage renal disease and HIV), and at best offers extremely limited assistance with drug costs. Of the current 6 million Medicare beneficiaries also eligible for Medicaid - the very poorest seniors and disabled persons - about half, 3 million, will lose their current excellent drug coverage through means testing. Millions more seniors who currently have near-full coverage through a former employer or Medigap plan also face higher costs for lower benefits.
The prime beneficiaries of the current legislation are not the aged and infirmed; it is the pharmaceutical industry, which is rewarded for decades of price-gouging and fraud with an additional $137 billion in profits. Wall Street immediately reacted to Congress’ largesse. Drug stock prices soared and the Bill’s Congressional supporters can expect a boost in contributions to their 2004 campaigns.
The bill prohibits the Secretary of HHS from negotiating the best price with manufacturers, despite the fact that other governmental agencies, the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense, negotiate 40-60% discounts as major purchasers right now. Also, the bill effectively outlaws Canadian imports (with their sharply reduced prices) unless the FDA “certifies” the drugs safety; FDA commissioner McClellan had already declared he would not do this.
But most destructive is the provision of billions of dollars to private Medicare HMO’s to give them the advantage in competition with traditional Medicare. This strategy achieves Newt Gingrich’s malign vision of forcing Medicare to “wither away.”
Medicare HMOs raise Medicare’s costs by “cherry picking,” enrolling the healthy and excluding the sick. Over the last decade they have ratcheted down their benefits while dumping millions of seniors deemed unprofitable.
Add to this the “Health Savings Account” provision which will attract the wealthy and healthy into tax-free schemes. HSA’s will seriously undermine the insurance risk pool for all of us. Risk-pooling is the source of strength, prudence, and effectiveness of national health insurance. The enemies of universal coverage understand this and thus have inserted this poison pill into Medicare “reform.”
There is hope. A recent poll by ABC News/Washington Post found that the more seniors and the public learn about Bush’s Medicare bill, the less they like it. A real drug benefit is needed now more than ever, and is easy to devise. It should be administered by Medicare, with that program’s low (3%) overhead, and take advantage of Medicare’s bargaining power to reverse the skyrocketing costs of medications. It should provide a comprehensive, first-dollar benefit. Seniors in England, Canada, Australia and other industrialized countries already enjoy such benefits. American seniors deserve no less.
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Physicians for a National Health Program is a 12,000 member organization that makes its headquarters in Chicago. PNHP has spokespeople across the country. For a contact in your area, please call (312) 782-6006. Media are also invited to receive our press releases via e-mail by enrolling at www.pnhp.org.
Dr. Quentin Young is an internist in private practice in Chicago. He is a co-founder and volunteer national coordinator of PNHP for the past decade.