Senate Goes Home Without a Medicare Drug Program

New study shows seniors are skipping their medicines

Senators give up on drug plan.  Lawmakers can't break stalemate, go home without prescription benefit for seniors. The Senate rejected on Wednesday a fourth Medicare prescription drug proposal, virtually assuring the Medicare prescription drug issue will influence the November midterm elections

The Senate's failure Wednesday to pass a prescription drug benefit plan for the nation's 40 million seniors on Medicare makes it highly unlikely that the contentious issue can be resolved before November's high-stakes elections.

   "It makes me sick," said Detroiter Eddie Caldwell, a retired educator who supports herself on a $525 monthly Social Security check and pays about $200 a month for prescription drugs to treat diabetes, blood clots and high blood pressure. "Do they just forget about us seniors?
   "It's like they don't care."
   The scaled-back $390 billion measure aimed at the neediest Medicare beneficiaries failed 50-49, falling 11 votes short of the 60 needed to pass. Lawmakers then decided to end the prescription drug debate that had consumed more than two weeks of the Senate's time.
   Opponents of the measure, mostly Republicans, argued that it was too costly and would be better administered with the help of private insurers. It was the fourth time in the past week that the Senate rejected a prescription drug plan.
   Both parties are aware of the possibility of an angry backlash.
   "The hottest spot in political hell may belong to those senators who voted no on the (drug benefit) compromise," said Robert Hayes, president of the nonprofit Medicare Rights Center in New York.
   The drug benefit proposal that failed would have created a Medicare-run program allowing seniors with incomes below $17,720 and couples with incomes below $23,880 to buy prescriptions with a co-payment of $2 for generic drugs and $5 for brandname drugs. An enrollment fee of $25 annually would have provided every senior with discounts of up to 30 percent on prescription drugs and payment of all "catastrophic" drug bills over $3,300 a year.
      
   As the nation's prescription drug costs soar about 17 percent a year, senior advocacy groups Wednesday expressed frustration that senators couldn't reach a deal.
      The House-passed and Senate-proposed plans would mean the biggest expansion of government aid to seniors since the creation of Medicare in 1965.
   
   For seniors such as Irene Kaye of Harper Woods, the Senate's failure means they'll have to keep searching for options to pay for costly medicines.
   Kaye is considering going to Canada to try to get her prescriptions, which total at least $200 a month, at a lower price.
   "We could all use some help," Kaye said. "Fortunately we still can eat now, but there are some (seniors) that don't eat because of this, and that's sad.
   "It just seems like the lawmakers are dragging their feet."
   

Survey finds seniors skipping prescriptions

Nearly one in four seniors say they sometimes don’t fill prescriptions because of their high cost or they skip doses to make their prescriptions last longer, according to a new eight-state survey of the effects of high drug prices on elderly Americans.

For those who skimp, the high cost of drugs “is more than a financial burden, it’s a health risk,” said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a sponsor of the study released Wednesday.

Overall, 22 percent of the nearly 11,000 Americans over 65 who were surveyed said they’d skimped on their prescribed drugs in 2001 to save money. The figure jumped to more than a third for seniors who didn’t have health insurance that covered some of the costs of their prescriptions.

That one-third included seniors with chronic and costly diseases, including diabetes and heart disease, for whom drug treatment is essential. Three in 10 seniors with high blood pressure and no drug coverage, for example, said they had skipped doses, and just less than that number said they hadn’t filled one or more of their prescriptions.

The Commonwealth Fund and the Kaiser Family Foundation, two independent health research agencies based in Menlo Park, Calif., and New York, respectively, sponsored the telephone survey. Researchers at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston participated.

Seniors were polled in California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.  

For information on how you can have your patients get the drugs they need, go to www.diabetesmeds.org