What started with a bang ends with a whimper. In loud proclamations at county fairs, on campaign planes and at giant national conventions, presidential candidate George W. Bush pledged to fix the broken Medicare system and provide seniors with affordable prescription drug coverage. At countless stops in endless Midwestern towns, he called “reforming the system” a priority. Yet five months before voters decide now-President Bush’s re-election fate, those proclamations are somewhat muted. What Republicans anticipated as an election-year coup d’etat – the co-opting of a traditionally Democratic issue – has turned out to be a colossal election year disaster.

The White House continues to peddle its “solution” to the Medicare crisis: a discount drug card intended to allow seniors a price break on their drug costs. But in classic bait-and-switch fashion, the card seniors actually get offers little, if any, savings over prices currently available, yet provides record profits to pharmaceutical companies that fund Bush’s presidential campaign. Despite an $18 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign to promote the cards, early results suggest that seniors just aren’t buying.

Let’s start with the basics – and in theory, it’s pretty basic. Eligible seniors are directed to dial 1-800-MEDICARE, or visit www.medicare.gov, and find out which cards are available in their state and how each compares. Then, they sign up for the plan of their choice, and the drug discount card will be sent directly to their mailbox. Easy, right? Not so fast.

The Medicare Web site lists 73 choices for coverage. It’s up to the seniors – the ones who are wired, anyway – to sift through dozens of options to determine whether the coverage offered is better than what they’re currently saving. Clearly, Bush envisions millions of 70-somethings creating complicated Excel spreadsheets, cross-referencing their current menu of drug savings with the ones offered by the government. Alternately, seniors could call the toll-free number – but high call volumes and insufficient call staffing has meant that they should be prepared to call again, and again, and again.

For those who do successfully utilize the program, they’re rewarded with: not much.

A September 2003 General Accounting Office study found an average savings of less than $5 per prescription on the nine most widely used drugs. In April, California Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic head of the Government Reform Committee, directed an analysis that found the cards allowed seniors savings “no lower than the prices currently available,” and significantly higher than those available in Canada.

Faced with a scenario of maximum effort for minimal results, relatively few seniors have taken “advantage” of the drug cards. AARP, the largest seniors’ advocacy group with more than 35 million members, notes they’ve mailed out only 26,000 enrollment kits, and signed up a mere 400 people. Nationally, Department of Health and Human Services spokespeople acknowledge that despite millions of calls to the toll-free hot line, few are following through to see any benefits.

There are a couple of groups out there seeing maximum results: drug companies and HMOs. Medicare actuary Richard Foster, who admitted he’d been asked to lie to Congress about the actual cost of the Medicare bill, also low-balled the amount that drug companies and HMOs would profit under this Republican bill. In March, Foster said that federal subsidies for private health plans would cost “more than three times as much as Congress assumed” – a total of $46 billion, for a drug plan that won’t significantly help a single senior.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Since the 2000 election cycle, the pharmaceutical industry has given over $35 million to Republicans. At a lavish New York City fundraiser in 2002, Bush raised more than $20 million from event sponsors GlaxoSmithKline and others in the pharmaceutical industry in a single night.

Two years later, the pharmaceutical fat cats continue to see their pockets filled and American seniors are still reeling from the old prescription-card shark’s bait-and-switch.

John Carr is the president of the Maine Council of Senior Citizens.

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