Letters to the Editor

The President Must Fulfill his Promise of a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit

January 31, 2002

Yesterday, the President faced a weakened, but hopeful country and outlined his plan for improving the nation. The safety of our citizens topped the list of priorities. This goal can be realized in the President's commitment to providing seniors with a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Medicare covers 40 million Americans but is the only major insurance provider not offering any type of drug discount or cost sharing. When juxtaposed with the fact that prescription drug costs are the fastest growing segment of health care expenditure, the call to action on this issue must be immediate.

The President correctly stated that the highest priority should go toward providing voluntary prescription drug benefits to those most in need, low-income beneficiaries who do not have access to drug benefits under other plans.

A prescription drug benefit must be added under our Medicare system provided that it is financed in such a way as to create enough revenue to support the costs, both long and short term, of the program. This must be done without threatening the current Medicare program or requiring cuts in payments for other services or reduced benefits in other areas.

Research should be conducted into the use of evidence based formularies; compilations of drugs that professional health care staff in a certain setting consider to be the most useful in patient care. This partnered with a tiered co-payment system which would provide some financial relief for the financially conscience by providing discounts on formulary drugs, could serve as a means to safely and effectively reduce the cost of a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Decisions about which drugs are chosen for formulary inclusion should be based on effectiveness, safety and ease of administration, not on cost.

The maximum allowable Medicare reimbursement for prescription drugs should balanced between the need to restrain the cost of the benefit with the need to create financial incentives for manufacturers to continue to develop new products. Rigid price controls may discourage innovation and thus threaten the drug supply, and so should be rejected. Medicare should instead investigate average wholesale drug prices and directly negotiate with manufacturers.

It is ridiculous that seniors comprise the group of heaviest prescription drug users, but Medicare provides no prescription drug benefit. As a result, our aging citizens must pay the full retail prices for prescriptions. President Bush should be applauded for his commitment to help our nations aging population by modernizing Medicare.

With the soaring costs of war, our nation's health care may get pushed to down on the agenda. The President must fulfill his promise to create a sense of a national health security. Seniors need access to affordable prescription drugs and the President must work towards establishing a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

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