Of course, heaven forbid Lehigh mentions an important fact: it was Democrats who fought tooth and nail to give the program power to negotiate for drugs, and to have it run directly out of Medicare. Lets take these measures one at a time.
1. Running the program from inside Medicare, instead of the hodgepodge approach of dozens of different options that confuse everyone involved, pharmacists, doctors, and seniors themselves.
If the program had been run from inside Medicare, where the administrative costs almost reach a lofty 2% of the total, would have saved tons of money in overhead – especially when compared to private plans with overhead ranging from 15-35%.
What’s 15-35% overhead? That means that for every dollar designated to pay for the drugs of seniors who need the help, between 1/6 and 1/3 will go to paying the staff of the health/drug insurance companies. That’s a GREAT way to spend money. Boy am I glad Republicans insisted on keeping the drug plan outside of Medicare!
2. Direct price negotiation – this is the big one. Pop quiz: what entity pays the lowest prices for prescription drugs in America? Give up? It’s not CVS, Walgreens, or WalMart. It’s the VA – the Veterans Administration, which bargains with the drug companies to drive down its costs dramatically! In fact, they do it so well, the Republican Congress and President BANNED Medicare from doing the same thing.
When Democrats fought for these two things, they said that if we can bring the Medicare drug plan into Medicare, and allow it to negotiate, its tremendous buying power would drastically lower costs … and allow more seniors to get more benefits for the same amount of money.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Democratic fight for lower costs for seniors turns into…
“One depressing memory of the 2004 presidential campaign was watching the Democratic candidates tumble over themselves in their hurry to tell seniors that the new drug benefit simply wasn’t generous enough.”
Your Liberal Media, Hard at Work.
