Members of Congress apparently don't want to taste their own
Medicare medicine.
Lawmakers
recently passed separate Medicare bills mandating specific
prescription drug plans for all seniors. But afterwards, the House
approved a bill (H.R. 2631) that will guarantee federal
retirees-including retired members of Congress-the prescription
drug benefits they already receive from their private health
plans.
That means
if the bills become law, every federal retiree will be exempt from
limited plans the rest of us will have to choose from.
So much
for a government "of the people, by the people, for the
people."
It's no
wonder lawmakers want to protect their choices. If either the House
or Senate version of the Medicare bills becomes law, about one out
of three private-sector retirees would lose the drug coverage their
former employer provides, according to the Congressional Budget
Office. This means they would be dumped into the new government-run
drug benefit plan with significantly poorer benefits and higher
out-of-pocket costs, as Heritage Foundation health-care experts
Robert Moffit and Derek Hunter point out.
They also
note the exemption bill shows just how bad the Medicare reform
bills really are. "Members of Congress must return to the drawing
board and draft real Medicare reform. If these costly, but
inferior, drug benefit plans aren't good enough for the
politicians, they're not good enough for the rest of us either,"
Moffit says.
For more information or to receive an e-mail version of
"Medicare Maladies," e-mail chris.kennedy@heritage.org
or call Heritage Media Services at (202) 675-1761.
"Medicare
Maladies" is a regular feature, launched 7/14/03, from The Heritage
Foundation. Sad to say, there's another malady coming your way
tomorrow.
Center for Health Policy Studies:
commentary by Robert E. Moffit and Derek Hunter
The
Crucial Elements of An Acceptable Medicare Bill
by Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D.
Time to Draw the Line
on Medicare "Reform"
by Nina Owcharenko
all research from the Center for Health Policy Studies
More
Medicare Maladies
