The Impending Medicare Drug Crisis

A couple years ago, the Republicans passed their Medicare Deform Reform Bill. Like theives in the night, they held the vote open from 3 - 6am, twisting arms and bribing members (like Congresman Nick Smith) until they had what they wanted, rejecting all attempts by the Democrats to include an option to allow for the Medicare system to negotiate for the best price with drug manufacturers. Well, it appears those chickens are starting to come home to roost...

From Thinkprogress.

The Bush administration’s implementation of its new Medicare prescription drug benefit wasn’t quite a “seamless transition” as Medicare administrator Mark McClellan promised. The Miami Herald has called the implementation of the new program an “unmitigated disaster.”

But instead of mitigating the disaster, the Bush administration has launched a PR campaign:

President Bush’s top health advisers will fan out across the country this week to quell rising discontent with a new Medicare prescription drug benefit that has tens of thousands of elderly and disabled Americans, their pharmacists, and governors struggling to resolve myriad start-up problems.

“Several hundred thousand” people enrolled in the new plans were unable to fill essential prescriptions and many states declared public health emergencies. Twenty states have stepped up to the plate to “help low-income people by paying drug claims that should have been paid by the federal Medicare program.”

McClellan, who has found plenty of cash for his propaganda campaigns, now refuses to reimburse these 20 states that picked up the administration’s slack:

People are in Medicare drug plans, and it’s the Medicare plans that are supposed to pay for the medications.

Additional reports from Dailykos.

First off, here's a story from Tom Raum of the AP:

The Medicare drug program that was supposed to win political points for Republicans has exploded in their faces as this election year has begun. It's a particularly vexing problem for the GOP, since older Americans are such active voters and no one seeking office wants to see them angry.

Since the Bush administration's prescription medicine program began on Jan. 1, tens of thousands of elderly people have been unable to get medicines promised by the government. Some 20 states have had to jump in to help them.

{snip}

'The political fallout is potentially enormous,'' said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. ''This is a program that touches tens of millions of people. And anytime that a government program is working poorly, and is affecting adversely so many people, it's bound to have huge consequences.''

Yeah. I'll say. Newspapers around the country have leads like this one in the Seattle Times:

After five years of getting her prescriptions filled for no charge at her local pharmacy in Maple Valley, Estella Easterly, 84, says she recently was told she had to pay full price -- or go without.

She couldn't prove that she had enrolled in one of Medicare's new Part D drug plans. Her insurance company hadn't sent her a membership card yet, and it set up her eligibility information improperly in the computer system. So Easterly -- who lives on about $600 a month -- paid what she could: $24 for a half-month's worth of one of her medications.

"I'm not one that cries very easily," said Easterly, a widow who used to get her drugs paid for by the government because of her low income. "If I can't get it straightened out, I'll just have to do without my medicines. I just can't afford that every month."

And this story crosses lines out of news into many other areas of the news landscape. Cable news network's "health reporters" cover the story, as do columns based on family issues. Here's Newsday's Family & Relationships column:

Welcome to 2006, when millions of older Americans will be falling down the doughnut hole, searching for new adventures in Medicareland, where things are "curiouser and curiouser."

{snip}

But Gottlich doubts this Congress or President George W. Bush will deal with the fundamental reason for these problems. As correspondent Margaret Warner said recently on PBS' "NewsHour," "There's no standard government-designed plan" administered by Medicare. "Instead, enrollees have to choose from dozens of plans offered by private insurance, with different deductibles, co-pays and lists of authorized drugs."

Some Democrats want to modify the privatization aspects of the law by having at least one standard plan run by Medicare. But that would mean competition for private companies from the more efficient Medicare system, which could use its purchasing power to drive prices down. The Republicans and the drug companies who bought them won't hear of it.

Oooo, ouch.

At least 20 states have had to step up to help out seniors. And the list is growing.

This is a screwup on such a massive scale it's hard to grasp it. But after the highly publicized but geographically limited screwing of the Gulf Coast, millions of Americans all over the country are learning some basic facts.

The current GOP can't be trusted to run the government. The mix of cronyism, corporatism, and corruption is undermining any effectiveness the federal government had. Even massive amounts of money can't help, as the Medicare bill's huge cost is going to be wasted in corporate giveaways. Just as soldiers can't get body armor as the government spends so much money to outsource logistics to Halliburton, seniors can't get the drugs they need because this legislation was designed to take of Big Pharma. I'll leave you with one final little story:

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America announced yesterday that retiring Rep. W.J."Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce until he stepped down from that post earlier this year after complaints about his job hunting, will be the trade group's new chief.

PhRMA, the trade association for the drug industry, had approached Tauzin in January while he was in negotiations for the top lobbying job at the Motion Picture Association of America. More importantly, the House committee oversees the drug industry as well as the telecommunications, media and entertainment industries, and Tauzin, whose committee shared jurisdiction over Medicare, had shortly before helped write and promote a controversial Medicare prescription drug benefit for the elderly.

Rumor has it this is one of the biggest money deals given by any trade association.

The GOP insiders cash in while Americans suffer.

I absolutely could not have said it better. This is a perfect example of what the Republican party has come to stand for - maximized profits at the expense of those who are most vulnerable.

"Let 'em eat cake"... yeah, or dogfood. Whatever - as long as our stock prices (the Dow just passed 11,000 yesterday) stay up.

Vyan