Instead travelling around the country trying to convince people that the Medicare drug plan isn't a total clusterfuck why don't you, you know, fix it.Clusterfuck is in the eye of the beholder. Billions in hand outs
to big phrama. Millions in extra costs to the states. What's to fix?
Everything is going according to plan.
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.
Even as federal leaders touted the enrollment figures, state
officials and health care experts continued to report widespread
difficulties, especially for the poorest and sickest seniors who were
forced to switch from state Medicaid programs to the new Medicare plans
on Jan. 1. Nearly two dozen states have intervened, saying they will
pay for medications for any low-income senior who is mistakenly
rejected. The District, Maryland and Virginia have not intervened.
Saying
"it is time for us to take care of our own," Republican Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger said California will spend as much as $150 million to
provide medications to as many as 1 million low-income seniors who have
been turned away by pharmacists or overcharged co-payments because of
glitches in computer databases.
"Right now, the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program is not working as intended," the governor said in a release.
One of the front page ledes in the Dallas Morning News this morning is "Drug Mess Leaves Pharmacists Dazed."
It's
not just the seniors who are going crazy trying to figure this out.
Everyone is. The general perception is and has been from the start that
this legislation stinks.
Kocot said Medicare had fixed technical problems that had initially
hobbled a database for pharmacists. The agency also urged companies
offering drug plans to beef up staffing at swamped telephone call
centers.
Advocates for the poor have reacted with dismay to the problems,
saying their warnings that a sudden transition would cause such
problems went unheeded.
"This is a public health disaster," said Jeanne Finberg, a lawyer
in the Oakland office of the National Senior Citizens Law Center.
"There are people going to pharmacies and being told they can't get
medications that are supposed to be covered. There are people who can't
get confirmation that they are in a plan."
When the Medicare drug benefit was under consideration, the
Administration and congressional leaders promised that a program
operated through many private plans would provide, through competition,
low drug prices. The Families USA survey belies that assertion.
"The huge prices paid by seniors and taxpayers could have been
avoided if Congress and the President had not caved in to the pressure
of the drug lobby," said Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families
USA. "They prohibited Medicare from bargaining for cheaper prices and,
to ensure that this would never change, they delegated the
administration of the benefit to private plans, which have far less
bargaining clout.
"As a result, many seniors will be burdened with unaffordable, high drug costs, and America's taxpayers will be fleeced."
The survey found that the lowest VA price is much lower than the
lowest Medicare prescription drug plan (PDP) price for 19 of the top 20
drugs.
* For half of the top 20 drugs, the lowest Medicare prescription
drug plan price is at least one and one-half times higher than the
lowest VA price.
* For one-quarter of the top 20 drugs, the lowest Medicare
prescription drug plan price is at least twice as high as the lowest VA
price.
* For three of the top 20 drugs, the lowest Medicare prescription
drug plan price is at least four times grater than the lowest VA price.
Among the top seven drugs prescribed for seniors, the annual
difference between the lowest VA prices and lowest Medicare drug plan
prices are as follows:
* Plavix (75 mg., an anti-clotting agent): lowest VA price is
$887.16; lowest Medicare plan price is $1,229.64—a difference of
$342.48, or 38.6 percent.
* Lipitor (10 mg., cholesterol lowering agent): lowest VA price is
$497.16; lowest Medicare plan price is $717.84—a difference of $220.68,
or 44.4 percent.
* Fosamax (70 mg., osteoporosis treatment): lowest VA price is
$493.32; lowest Medicare plan price is $709.68—a difference of $216.36,
or 43.9 percent.
* Norvasc (5 mg., calcium channel blocker): lowest VA price is
$301.68; lowest Medicare plan price is $458.88—a difference of $157.20,
or 52.1 percent.
* Protonix (40 mg., gastrointestinal agent): lowest VA price is
$253.32; lowest Medicare plan price is $1,080—a difference of $826.68,
or 326.3 percent.
* Celebrex (200 mg., anti-inflammatory agent): lowest VA price is
$619.80; lowest Medicare plan price is $865.08—a difference of $245.28,
or 39.6 percent.
* Zocor (20 mg., cholesterol lowering agent): lowest VA price is
$167.80; lowest Medicare plan price is $1,323.72—a difference of
$1,155.92, or 688.9 percent.
No single Medicare plan offers the lowest price for all 20 drugs
compared to its plan competitors. As a result, for seniors who take
multiple medicines, the total difference between VA and Medicare plan
prices may be much larger than 48 percent.
For example, for a person purchasing a year's supply of the top five
drugs—Plavix, Lipitor, Fosamax, Norvasc, and Protonix—the lowest VA
price is $2,432.64. In comparison, the prices (paid partially by
Medicare beneficiaries and partially by taxpayers) for the five plans
recommended by the government's Web-based "Medicare Prescription Drug
Plan Finder" for a person purchasing those five drugs are:
* Humana, Inc.: $4,206-$1,773.36 (or 73 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* First Health Premier: $5,010.60-$2,577.96 (or 106 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* Medi-Care First: $4,530.48-$2,097.84 (or 86 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* PacifiCare: $4,561.16-$2,128.52 (or 87 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
* WellCare: $4,348.80-$1,916.16 (or 79 percent) higher than the lowest VA price
According to the Families USA survey, VA prices are lower for both generic and brand-name drugs:
* 18 of the 20 most-prescribed medicines for seniors are brand-name
drugs. For 17 of those 18 brand-name drugs, the VA price was much lower
than Medicare drug plan prices. For those drugs, the median difference
between the lowest Medicare plan price and the lowest VA price is 44.1
percent.
* Two of the top 20 drugs are generics. For those drugs, the median
difference between the lowest Medicare drug plan and the lowest VA
price is 94.5 percent.
The Families USA report was based on a comparison of VA prices with
the prices in two Medicare drug regions: region 5 (covering the
District of Columbia, Maryland, and Delaware) and Region 14 (covering
Ohio). Only drugs that were on a Medicare prescription drug plan's
formulary—drugs for which the plan would have actively negotiated
prices—were included in the analysis. All data were collected during
the week of November 14, 2005 (when the new program's enrollment began)
from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service's "Medicare
Prescription Drug Plan Finder" at www.medicare.gov.
This one just may put it over the top. Seniors are PISSED. And as many people have pointed out, they vote.
And
their families are also pissed that they've got to figure all this out
for grandma. And even once they figure it out -- grandma's still
screwed. And a lot of those family members also vote. Well at least when the elderly get shafted, they vote. Of course, I
haven't looked at the demographics, but aren't there alot of elderly
in, say, Florida and Arizona??
