Opinion Pieces Discuss Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Debate

Several opinion pieces published recently address the congressional debate over a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Summaries of the opinion pieces appear below.

• Arizona Daily Star: President Bush will "mobiliz[e] his rubber stamp allies in the House" to pass a prescription drug benefit "designed to favor the health insurance racket and the herd senior citizens into insurance schemes they would not embrace," syndicated columnist Thomas Oliphant writes in a Daily Star opinion piece. Instead of Bush's planned "modified privatization of Medicare in which the drug benefits ... would be far more stingy" than those offered by private insurers, Congress and the administration should approve a plan that continues supplemental health insurance and guarantees beneficiaries access to at least two private insurers, Oliphant concludes (Oliphant, Arizona Daily Star, 6/12).
  
  
• Boston Globe: Although a bipartisan compromise to add a drug benefit could lead to the "greatest improvement in Medicare" since its inception, congressional Democrats should "be on their guard" to ensure that legislation "retains the sweep and inclusiveness" of the program and does not "impose higher costs on affluent ... beneficiaries," a Globe editorial says (Boston Globe, 6/12).
  
  
• Las Vegas Review-Journal: If the administration and legislators abide by the bipartisan compromise on a drug benefit as proposed in the Senate Finance Committee, "billions of taxpayers' dollars can be saved without compromising medical care," according to a Review-Journal editorial (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 6/11).
  
  
• Los Angeles Times: A Medicare prescription drug benefit should "begin now and be paid for now" instead of being implemented in 2006, as is proposed in President Bush's plan, a Times editorial states. Further, a benefit should allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices and "not leave [prices] to the crazy quilt of the market, which failed to contain costs for the nondrug medical care" of the Medicare+Choice program, the Times concludes (Los Angeles Times, 6/12).
  
  
• Philadelphia Inquirer: Democrats should reconsider approving a prescription drug benefit to Medicare this summer because if such a benefit is enacted, President Bush will use the issue as a way to convince voters of his "compassion" during the 2004 presidential campaign, syndicated columnist Matt Miller writes in an Inquirer opinion piece (Miller, Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/12).
  
  
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The addition of a drug benefit to Medicare is "a fiscal time bomb," and "[t]o defuse it, Congress will have to affect economies in the Medicare program, demand more in the way of payments from [beneficiaries] for doctors' visits and adopt some form of means testing to control costs," according to a Post-Gazette editorial (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/12).
  
  
• San Jose Mercury News: President Bush should use his influence to ensure that the final version of legislation adding a drug benefit to Medicare includes cost controls, including discounts to the program from drug makers, a Mercury News editorial states (San Jose Mercury News, 6/12).
  
  
• Washington Post: "[H]ard-nosed politicians who don't want to go into another election campaign without having procured a prescription drug benefit" in Medicare have produced compromise legislation that "represents not a decent balance between ideological opponents but rather a mishmash," a Post editorial says. Establishing a $400 billion benefit while at the same time enacting tax cuts is "gross fiscal irresponsibility," and proposals to add another private option with "fallback drug coverage in areas" that lack participating private insurers "seem half-baked at best," the Post concludes (Washington Post, 6/12).
  
  
• Washington Post: Congressional Democrats should "fight to improve" prescription drug benefit legislation, but "should also remember that there will be time to repair it, and more political support, once the bill becomes law," Nancy-Ann DeParle, former Medicare administrator under President Clinton and currently a senior adviser at JPMorgan Partners, writes in a Post opinion piece (DeParle, Washington Post, 6/12).