The new Medicare discount drug card program that starts tomorrow is one of the worst programs imaginable. So far not nearly as many seniors have signed up as expected. No wonder. Here are a few of its features:
- You pick one card (there are at least 73), even though different cards may be better or worse for individual drugs among the many that a single senior may have to take regularly.
- Websites (assuming internet access), even official ones, have been giving inaccurate comparisons of the cards and drug prices - even though the function of the sites is to give comparisons so seniors can make informed choices.
- Phone lines have been jammed (1,000 counselors for 1.6 million beneficiaries) and sometimes people are redirected (automatically) to the wrong section of the phone tree, get disconnected or, if lucky, wait over 20 minutes and get to speak to someone.
- Even if you (perhaps accidentally) choose the best card of the bunch for your particular mix of drugs at different prices, so that you save the most you can (the point of all this - a point almost lost in the process) - your card drug plan can change and increase prices when it wants to do so - and you don’t have similar flexibility (see below).
- You get to change your card only once at the end of the year if you picked a bad one.
- All this ends in 2006 when the ‘real’ drug plan takes effect - only that one is so riddled with holes in coverage that seniors will be forgiven if they think that the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress never really wanted them to have a good program anyway.
Seniors should press hard and make sure that this becomes a major issue in the presidential campaign and thereafter. Giving seniors cost savings on expensive drugs shouldn’t cause them anxiety, high blood pressure, confusion, insomnia, or any of the other unnecessary symptoms the current program inflicts so needlessly on the very people it is supposed to help.
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