Wisconsin, responding to out of control drug prices, has instituted called SeniorCare.
The Capital Times:
When Bette Linton fell on the stairs a year ago, the 85-year-old broke her right leg in three places.
The federal government's Medicare program helped her pay for the hospital stay and rehabilitation. The four drugs she was prescribed would have cost her about $684 a year under Medicare's drug program, a significant amount for Linton, who lives off her monthly Social Security check.
Instead, the Fitchburg resident enrolled in SeniorCare, a Wisconsin state program that has provided comprehensive drug coverage to seniors since 2002. Linton now pays only $180 annually for the prescriptions.
A good deal for seniors, huh? And, as a taxpayer, it's also a good deal for you. According to Patricia Finder-Stone, the president of AARP Wisconsin, the feds pay $617 per person under SeniorCare, compared to $1,331 per under Medicare. Medicare Part D is more than twice as expensive.
And what do you get for all that extra money? Pretty much jack. Corporations, on the other hand, get plenty.
Campaign for America's Future:
Specific provisions of the Medicare prescription drug program inserted at the request of pharmaceutical and HMO interests will cost taxpayers and seniors more than $80 billion a year, according to a report released today by the Institute for America's Future and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The study, released by a coalition of groups led by the Campaign for America's Future, Public Campaign Action Fund, USAction and MoveOn.org Political Action, connects the program's escalating costs and complexity to the influence exerted by lobbyists for health insurance, health services and pharmaceutical companies in drafting the bill. According to the report, industry campaign contributions totaled $96 million from 2000 to 2004, and industry profits will swell by 500 to 600 percent as the new legislation goes into effect.
"In a sellout to the drug companies, Congress prohibited Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors," says Institute for America's Future co-director Roger Hickey. "Then it threw in billions of subsides to HMOs, adding another layer of confusion, bureaucracy and costs to the program. America's most vulnerable—seniors in need of prescription drugs—will pay the cost of this corruption."
As a result of Medicare Part D, insurance companies' profits have shot through the roof. Humana, for example, saw its profits double since the plan went into place. It seems to me that a health care program should be focused on helping patients -- Medicare Part D is designed to help corporations...
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