A benefit

that will

bring pain


A Medicare-paid prescription drug benefit is a humane thing to do for seniors struggling to buy essential medicine.

But it is estimated to cost taxpayers as little as $400 billion or as much as $2.2 trillion over the next decade – and it’s that absence of a meaningful price tag that should worry us all.

What is now offered as a benefit to seniors could bring pain to younger, tax-strapped Americans down the road.

When President Clinton proposed a prescription drug benefit in 2000 he estimated the cost at $195 billion over 10 years. Three years later, the cost has doubled because of greater needs and rising costs.

In testimony before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations last year, Dr. Alan Sager from the Boston University School of Public Health raised a red flag about Medicare benefit costs based on the experience of similar benefits offered through the Veterans Administration.

The volume of people seeking VA-paid drugs rose 2.5 times between 1995 and 2001. The VA’s drug costs were $1.6 billion in fiscal 1999 and, by conservative measures, expected to top $3.3 billion in the next fiscal year.

We should expect the same trend in Medicare benefits.

The pharmaceutical industry supports the proposed benefit package and has urged the Senate to act quickly to approve the measure. It’s a sanctimonious gesture on its part.

By industry measures, 60 percent of all prescription drugs are purchased by seniors. If Medicare starts paying for pills, drug companies will have a giant guaranteed longtime customer in Uncle Sam.

The plight of elders who must choose between food, heating oil or medicine is cruel and real. But so, too, is the tremendous financial burden the Medicare prescription benefit will put on younger Americans.

Although seniors will be charged $25 a month for the added benefit, that won’t begin to cover the actual costs of the medicine they receive.

Last year, a Lewiston couple was among a group of seniors who climbed aboard a Canada-bound bus to buy six months worth of prescriptions. If they bought their drugs in the United States, they could expect to spend $2,210 in that time, even with a 25 percent discount offered by the Healthy Maine Prescription card. In Canada, they saved $1,480.

Under the Medicare prescription benefit, this couple will pay just $150 in premiums every six months and get all the medicine they need. They will save $4,120 a year without ever getting on a bus. But, what they save becomes a cost to taxpayers.

The government, of course, will negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry to get the best possible drug prices under this Medicare benefit plan, but since we also know the industry isn’t about to sacrifice profit, younger Americans who are not eligible for this benefit will be squeezed for the difference. Those who are fortunate enough to have insurance may not feel the pinch as much as those who don’t, but the cost shift is a guarantee.

So, not only will younger Americans be paying more tax dollars to subsidize the prescription drug benefit, their own out-of-pocket drug costs will go up.

These increases will come as state and federal governments are busy levying $4.3 billion in new taxes and $2.3 billion in new fees on all kinds of services in the coming fiscal year, eating up the Bush administration’s grandiose tax cut.

A Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors will further bend overburdened taxpayers and do nothing to halt the pharmaceutical industry’s runaway greed.

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