Private interests ruled in program that should serve elder population

Millions of senior citizens today are falling into a hole created by legislation Republicans claimed would benefit seniors when it was actually written by drug companies who unabashedly favored themselves first and foremost.

Medicare Part D was a historic opportunity to provide real relief for seniors to help cover the cost of prescription drugs. But Republicans were more interested in special interests than the common good, and so they forced through Congress a deeply flawed bill that overwhelmingly fails the American people.

The legislation includes a so-called doughnut hole — a gap in coverage where seniors continue to pay premiums but receive no benefit. Once they use $2,250 in benefits, seniors are left on their own, and coverage does not resume until they have spent $3,600 of their own money. Seniors are forced to pay the full cost of prescription drugs, and at the same time they still have to pay a premium to their insurance company every month.

The legislation neutralizes the enormous purchasing power of 40 million seniors that would otherwise yield dramatic savings in the cost of drugs.

The legislation channels implementation through hundreds of private insurance companies that contract with Medicare. This fragments purchasing power into hundreds of pieces, and the legislation reinforces this artificial price support by explicitly prohibiting the secretary of health and human services from negotiating on behalf of seniors for lower drug prices. Prices for drugs most often used by seniors have gone up substantially since this program was created.

Medicare Part D forces seniors to choose among complex and confusing plans by a date certain, or be penalized 1 percent a month for every month they postpone a decision. And the penalty would apply forever.

Our nation's seniors deserve and need help covering the cost of their prescription drugs, which will total nearly $2 trillion over the next 10 years. The ability of pharmaceutical advances to fight disease and prolong life is extraordinary — and amazing advances are just ahead. To deny seniors access to these benefits is simply unacceptable. And to take advantage of seniors as Republicans have done through this special-interest legislation is equally unacceptable.

When it comes to healthcare, Congress must have only one special interest — the American people. So long as we permit the private sector to govern the public sector, as was the case in Medicare Part D, the American people will be short-changed.

That is exactly what is happening today with America's healthcare crisis, yet the private sector bemoans every effort to include every American in a healthcare program, even as the crisis worsens.

In the richest nation on earth, affordable healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance and millions more — including many in Medicare — increasingly are finding that even their share of health costs are unaffordable.

If nothing else, the failure of Medicare Part D should be a wake-up call for the need to treat the healthcare crisis as any physician (and I am one) would treat a gravely ill patient. All the Band-Aids the special interests have applied have done nothing to heal the wound, much less cure the problem.

America spends more money on healthcare than dozens of other major nations, and yet Americans receive less. A rash of recent stories report that U.S. companies now are offering employees all-expense paid trips to other countries for medical treatment because it was cheaper — even after factoring in international travel and related expenses.

The conclusion is inescapable: healthcare is on life support and it is time to administer effective treatment. It is time for America to have universal healthcare that will put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests.

Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is a member of the U.S. House Ways and Committee. Reach him at 1035 Longworth House Office Building, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC 20515.