Lawmakers spar over Medicare drug coverage
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Just days before Medicare officials in Washington unveil the private prescription drug plans that will be available to the program’s 43 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries starting next January, both liberals and conservatives in Congress are calling for a delay in the controversial program.
Conservatives in the U.S. House Wednesday unveiled “Operation Offset,” an effort to find budget cuts to help pay for relief needed to rebuild the states and cities decimated by Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago. Delaying the new Medicare benefit by a year is at the top of the list, primarily because it would save an estimated $30 billion over the next decade.
“Many of us thought even before Katrina we couldn’t afford this benefit,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, Republican from Arizona. “We certainly today have to think we should put this benefit off.”
Meanwhile, Democrats in the House and Senate have proposed to delay the benefit’s rollout, at least in the states directly hit by the hurricane and the surrounding states that are temporarily hosting most of the evacuees.
Of particular concern, say advocates for the poor, are the Medicare beneficiaries whose drug costs are currently covered by the Medicaid health program. Those patients—many of them very old or institutionalized, will be automatically assigned to a drug plan this fall.
But Ruth Kennedy, deputy Medicaid director in Louisiana, says she’s not sure all of her state’s 100,000 “dual eligibles” can even be located at this point. As a result, many might not know how to obtain drugs when their Medicaid drug coverage ends Dec. 31.
The Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress—who consider the drug benefit their signature legislative achievement of the past four years—are struggling to keep the program on track. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Republican from Texas, who encouraged the conservative group to develop ways to pay for hurricane relief, nevertheless called the proposal for delay “a nonstarter.”
And Medicare and Medicaid Director Mark McClellan has been adamant that the program will proceed as scheduled, with notices going out early next month, and enrollment in plans beginning November 15. “There will be no delay in the drug benefit—I don’t know how many times I can say it,” McClellan told reporters Tuesday following a speech to a Medicaid reform conference.
During his speech, to a conference sponsored by the Center for Health Care Transformation, McClellan said the drug benefit is even more important in the wake of the storm, because it will provide so much help to so many low-income Medicare beneficiaries. “One in three Medicare beneficiaries will have access to coverage that will pay on average 95 percent of their drug costs,” he said.
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