Medicare Drug Discount CardÑA Meaningful Benefit?
By: Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2003-09-03 13:50:00-04:00
Yes
Many Would See Major Savings
By Tom Scully
The President's Framework to Modernize and Improve Medicare includes a discount card for all beneficiaries with a $600 subsidy for low-income beneficiaries for two important reasons.
First, it provides immediate relief to beneficiaries with the high cost of prescription drugs. Our Medicare beneficiaries are among the last in the marketplace to pay full price for their drugs. The president's plan would provide a discount drug card to all Medicare beneficiaries as early as 2004 that could save them 10 percent to 25 percent on the cost of many of their drugs.
Such savings can add up to significant relief if you are taking multiple medications, as many seniors do. In fact, most working Americans benefit from drug discounts through their private health plans.
Low-income people who are covered by Medicare need immediate help with their out-of-pocket drug costs, which is what making a $600 capped benefit with a Medicare discount drug card available would accomplish. The $600 subsidy will be added to their discount card and work like other federal electronic benefit transfer programs, with the card providing benefits right at the point of sale. According to the 2000 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, the average out-of-pocket spending for a Medicare beneficiary was $732.
While the prescription discount card was never intended to be a drug benefit, the $600 subsidy allows Medicare to extend an immediate helping hand to low-income seniors and can cover a large portion of their out-of-pocket costs.
Second, the drug discount card program will help us to more rapidly and effectively implement a Medicare prescription drug benefit. If Congress acts, this will be the biggest benefit expansion in the program's history, and we want to get it right. By implementing the prescription discount card first, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and beneficiaries will gain valuable experience with prescription drug services.
Tom Scully is the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which operates the two programs.
No
Bigger Discounts Already Exist
By Diane Archer
President Bush's proposed prescription drug discount card offers little if any financial relief to older and disabled Americans with traditional Medicare.
Today, 20 million men and women with Medicare have little or no prescription drug coverage. Many need multiple medications for cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and other chronic conditions. For these Americans, health care costs typically consume more than 30 percent of their income. The cost of drugs—which can easily reach more than $5,000 a year—becomes prohibitive. So they struggle. They go without. Some get sicker. Some die.
While the proposed discount card will offer 10 to 25 percent savings on many drugs, deeper discounts than those the president's card would offer are already available through numerous sources. For example, an Internet site for a Canadian pharmacy offers Americans drugs at 50 to 80 percent off retail, and it is one among scores of discount programs. Still, at the Medicare Rights Center, we hear from thousands of Americans with Medicare each year who cannot afford to fill prescriptions or who are forced to choose between their medications and their dinner.
Medicare was created to address the marketplace's failure to ensure that older adults are able to access the health care they need without being pushed into poverty. If President Bush really wants people to have the choice of staying in traditional Medicare, he must offer them a meaningful prescription drug benefit. Prescription drugs are such a critical part of treatment regimens today that older and disabled Americans need Medicare to cover them in the same way Medicare covers doctor and other medical services.
A majority of Americans favor expanding Medicare to include a prescription drug benefit even if it means giving up their tax cuts. And delaying or eliminating tax cuts for America's most wealthy would more than cover the cost. This should be an easy choice.
Diane Archer is the founder and special counsel of the Medicare Rights Center, a New York-based nonprofit group that assists beneficiaries.
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