Bush Calls Medicare Drug Benefit ‘Good Deal’ During Promotion Appearances in Minnesota

As reported in the Kansas City Star:

President Bush came to the Twin Cities onFriday to launch what he called a nationwide “grassroots effort toeducate people” about Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit.

The subsidy doesn’t become available until Jan. 1, but Bush said itwill require a “massive education effort” to persuade seniors to takeadvantage of it. That’s why he’s starting early, he said.

“We’re here to say to the seniors who live here in Minnesota andaround the country that Medicare has been strengthened, reformed andmodernized,” he told an invitation-only crowd of about 400 seniors,health-care providers and Republican partisans at the Maple GroveCommunity Center. It was a friendly crowd in the Republican suburb hecarried with 57 percent of the vote in 2004.

The informal meeting – he sat on a chairon a stage surrounded by seniors – was his first stop outsideWashington in what he promised would be many trips to call attention tothe Medicare expansion he signed into law in 2003.

Bush said he was there to persuade seniors, many of whom arereluctant to accept change, that it’s worth their while to fill out thegovernment forms required to enroll in the program.

“This is a good deal,” he said. “This isn’t political talk. This is true.”

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Aspects of the “good deal” the President didn’t mention:

    –The law creating the benefit included no drug cost containment provisions

     -CMS is prohited from negotiating discounts for Part D beneficiaries

     – The law prohibits drug re-importation except from Canada, and permits re-importation only by wholesalers and pharmacists (NOT consumers) AFTER regs are promulgated.  Current secretary of HHS Tommy Thompson says he doesn’t plan to issue any reimportation regs.

      – States can’t use Medicaid-funded programs to pay for pharmaceutical assistance

      – Part D premium increases are tied not to the CPI, but to increases in the costs of drugs used by enrollees.  (!)  Since the benefit was created, the estimated first year premium has risen from $35 (what beneficiaries were told at the end of 2003) to $37.23 (what they’re being told now).

    –Medigap policies won’t be allowed to offer insurance to cover the $3000 “donut hole”