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January 16, 2006
A Prescription for Disaster
Here's proof that Republicans can create wasteful, expensive, bureaucratic, and thoroughly screwed up government programs just as well as Democrats can:
With tens of thousands of people unable to get medicines promised by Medicare, the Bush administration has told insurers that they must provide a 30-day supply of any drug that a beneficiary was previously taking, and it said that poor people must not be charged more than $5 for a covered drug.
The actions came after several states declared public health emergencies, and many states announced that they would step in to pay for prescriptions that should have been covered by the federal Medicare program. . . .
In a directive sent to all Medicare drug plans over the weekend, the Bush administration said they "must take immediate steps" to ensure that low-income beneficiaries were not charged more than $2 for a generic drug and $5 for a brand-name drug.
In addition, it said insurers must cover a 30-day emergency supply of drugs that beneficiaries were taking prior to the start of the new program.
Did anyone outside of the Bush administration really expect anything good to come of this program? Well, it got Bush re-elected so he could do all those "conservative" things he really wanted to do in his first term but couldn't because of the election hanging over his head, so his supporters will tell us.
The article also says that Medicare is already paying for "one million prescriptions a day," a number sure to increase rapidly. Whatever the average cost per prescription is, we're talking some major bucks here, almost certainly more than even the White House's own estimate that it kept from Congress.
Thank goodness we have the Republicans to protect us from big government!
Posted by Mike Tennant at January 16, 2006 09:15 AM
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