Originally published February 12 2006
Bush’s Medicare program "inadequate"
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
For many, coverage will simply disappear until $3,100 is spent out of pocket. This infamous "hole in the donut" ensures coverage does not kick in again until a total of $5,100 is spent in prescription costs.
It was clear back in 2003, when the Bush administration rammed this bill through the Republican Congress, that the purpose was not to devise an affordable prescription drug program for seniors.
Now, as the year of reckoning arrives, the true cynicism of Bush's program is becoming evident to each senior citizen (or adult child of senior citizen) who attempts to fathom what Bush and the industry lobbyists wrought.
You pay a $250 deductible and then a 25 percent co-pay on the first $2,250 of drug benefits each year, plus roughly another $450 a year in premiums.
So if your prescriptions cost $2,250 a year, or about $190 a month, for prescriptions, you pay $1,200 a year all told and the plan pays just $1050.
Coverage simply disappears, until you have spent nearly $3,100 out of pocket.
Seniors must evaluate innumerable competing private plans, each with subtle differences in costs and benefits that make an impenetrable program even less fathomable, and raise total costs because each of these private plans tacks on a profit.
The second administration goal, fattening the drug industry, led to a provision explicitly prohibiting the government from negotiating bulk price discounts from drug companies, as the Veterans hospitals do.
As a result, according to a study by Families USA, drug prices obtained by the VA are about 48 percent less on average than those expected to be charged to people enrolled in the Medicare drug program.
Third, get rid of the donut hole, and design a simplified benefit structure with modest co-pays and then 100 percent coverage after a set annual cap on out-of-pocket costs.
Finally, if the savings from the bulk price discounts are not quite sufficient to cover costs of filling in the donut hole, take back a little of Bush's tax cuts to the richest one percent.
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