The Medicare prescription drug legislation won't hold down pharmaceutical costs because the Congress has forbidden the U.S. government from using its purchasing power to hold down prices; it prohibits re-importation from countries like Canada; and most importantly, it undercuts existing collectively bargained plans - aside from all of these problems, there were scandalous issues because of the way the legislative process was handled.
The Bush Administration knew that the real cost of the bill was actually $140 billion more than they said. That is why the inspector general of HHS is investigating the Administration now.
They threatened Members of the House - including Republican Members - if they did not support the bill. That's what the House ethics Committee is investigating right now.
And worst of all, the vote which was supposed to be recorded in 15 minutes, was held open extra time to allow them to corral the votes. It wasn't held open an extra five minutes, or an extra 30 minutes. It wasn't held open an extra hour. It was held open and extra 3 hours while they twisted arms and lied and threatened in order to eke out a win. Imagine if we had just kept the polls open an additional three hours in Florida in 2000....
Millions of Retirees Will Still Lose Coverage
Under Republican Medicare Reform Bill
The Republican Medicare reform bill, even with a new $18 billion revenue provision, will leave at least 2 million retirees without their employer-provided prescription drug coverage. Regardless of what the proponents of this new policy say, no one can dispute that the policy still inequitably treats Medicare beneficiaries in retiree health plans, does not represent a meaningful policy change that will encourage employers to maintain coverage, and still leaves millions of retirees vulnerable to losing their employer-sponsored drug coverage. More specifically, the new policy:
- Does nothing to correct the underlying injustice of inequitable treatment between retirees with employer-sponsored coverage and those without such coverage. More specifically, the policy does not eliminate or significantly moderate the so-called "true out-of-pocket" discrimination provision that excludes retiree health coverage to count towards eligibility for the new catastrophic health care benefit. As a consequence, the vast majority of seniors and their employers will never have access to this benefit and will receive less Medicare subsidies than those beneficiaries who do not have retiree health coverage.
- Still leaves 2.6 million retirees without employer-sponsored drug benefits. Preliminary estimates of the new revenue policy project that employer "dropping" may be reduced from 32 percent of retirees to 22 percent. However, this still leaves millions of retirees vulnerable to losing this critical coverage. There is no "spin" anyone can offer to comfort those Americans.
- Is an accounting change, not a true policy reform. The new policy does not represent a new subsidy for employers but a change in the tax treatment of the existing subsidy. It does not sufficiently address the undeniable problem of incentives that will lead to coverage drops.
- Does not provide one additional dime to public employers and multi-employer plans without tax liability. As a result, teachers, firefighters, policemen, construction workers and health care workers who, among others, rely on public employer or multi-employer health plans do not get any additional help.
- Siphons off $6 billion of available revenue to pay for individual health savings accounts for wealthy Americans that will undermine the insurance market. The Republican Medicare bill prioritizes making permanent health savings accounts/ medical savings accounts, which provides a tax incentive for high income Americans to purchase these policies and in so doing, disrupts the insurance market by segmenting healthy and wealthy people from sicker middle class Americans. This policy has nothing to do with seniors or the Medicare drug benefit and has only been tucked away as a pay off to insurance companies wishing to "cherry pick" desirable populations of Americans.
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