In this year’s State of the Union, Bush was still willing to talk about his Medicare plan (at the time, it wasn’t engrossed in scandal). To hear him tell it, some of the provisions would offer cost-saving benefits for seniors.
Meeting these goals requires bipartisan effort, and two months ago, you showed the way. By strengthening Medicare and adding a prescription drug benefit, you kept a basic commitment to our seniors: You are giving them the modern medicine they deserve.
Starting this year, under the law you passed, seniors can choose to receive a drug discount card, saving them 10 to 25 percent off the retail price of most prescription drugs — and millions of low-income seniors can get an additional $600 to buy medicine.
As Jon Stewart might say, “Funny story…”
It turns out those “savings” for seniors aren’t going to happen because the discounts won’t exist. The pharmaceutical industry is raising drug prices faster than the White House expected, so the “discount cards” won’t be effective. As the Wall Street Journal explained:
Prices for drugs the elderly use most often climbed nearly 3.5 times faster on average than overall inflation between January 2002 and January 2003, according to consumer group Families USA, which used data from a Pennsylvania program for the elderly.
Families USA, based in Washington, D.C., also warns on its Web site that the Medicare drug law that created the discount cards is vulnerable to price increases by the drug industry, “like a department store marking up prices on products so that it can later offer them ‘on sale’ at tremendous ‘savings.'”
And just think, this was supposed to be one of the least controversial parts of Bush’s Medicare scheme.