NYT’s and Dems Prefer Higher Drug Costs To Choice

The Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are focusing on the confusion of some of those who are mostly confused about most things in their lives, to rob the taxpayers of a cost-effective free market program and to deny prescription drug coverage for the other tens of millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

Beneath its headline, “Medicare Drug Spending Expected To Be Well Below Estimates,” the New York Times story instead dwells on the confusion many Medicare beneficiaries have in choosing a Part D prescription plan. Nonetheless, the fact of the genius of the Part D program’s reliance on free market competition among prescription plan providers can’t be denied (159 out of 381 words in the piece):

Federal spending on the new Medicare drug benefit will be 20 percent lower than expected this year because beneficiaries are choosing prescription drug plans with low premiums, the Bush administration said today. "People are tending to sign up for less expensive plans," said Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Beneficiary premiums are now expected to average $25 a month, down from the $37 projected last year, Dr. McClellan said. The net cost to the federal government for the drug coverage in 2006 is expected to be $30.5 billion, down from a prior estimate of $38.1 billion — a difference of $7.6 billion, or 20 percent. The estimated cost over 10 years is also lower: $678 billion, down 8 percent from the earlier estimate of $737 billion for the decade from 2006 to 2015. One reason for the lower cost is the intense competition among private insurers offering drug coverage to older Americans.

Meanwhile, the Democrats persist in their efforts to scuttle the program, instead preferring a no-choice nationalized medical system.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said she was tired of hearing how so many people were signing up. Many people in the program already had coverage, she said. "I for one believe we should scrap this and start over," Clinton said.

"It is nearly impossible to avoid startup challenges, but we now we must identify those individuals who are vulnerable and make certain that their needs are met," said Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.

The AP report continues:

The most critical assessments of the program came from Democrats. When McClellan [Mark McClellan, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] said the agency was trying to make the program "even easier" to understand, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said: "Even easier? It's bedlam out there."
The most serious concerns about the benefit center on the 6 million low-income people who had obtained drug coverage through Medicaid. In the transition to Medicare, a few hundred thousand may have had trouble because of data errors and because they switched plans late in the year [ed:causing delays in registering for benefits], McClellan said.