In his weekly radio address last weekend, President Bush called the new Medicare drug benefit "the greatest advance in health care for seniors and Americans with disabilities since the creation of Medicare 40 years ago."
OK, that's his view. Here are what some of the nation's newspapers think:
* Arizona Republic: In enacting the Medicare drug benefit, "Congress created a deeply flawed program of fiendish complexity with a price tag that is headed through the roof," a Republic editorial states. The editorial continues that lawmakers should "make some drastic changes, starting with allowing the government to negotiate better drug prices."
* Baltimore Sun: "It should soon be abundantly clear to lawmakers hoping for re-election next year that the drug benefit program desperately needs to be retooled," particularly to allow "Medicare to use the bargaining leverage of its 40 million beneficiaries to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies." According to the editorial, "The program as constructed is paying way too much for way too little in direct benefits to seniors." It continues, "Much more also needs to be done to make the benefit program comprehensible to its users."
* Chicago Tribune: The new drug benefit "is a runaway government entitlement of mind-numbing complexity, rammed through Congress with cooked numbers, launched at a time when the country can least afford it," according to a Tribune editorial. The editorial says that the "benefit is so confusing and so ineptly constructed that many seniors are likely to take a pass."
* Denver Post: The program could become "the mother of all federal boondoggles".
* Detroit Free Press: The new drug benefit is "hardly all-encompassing," and "[w]orse, the signup process is so complicated it's discouraging."
* Los Angeles Times: Medicare beneficiaries who enroll in the prescription drug benefit will "need an actuarial adviser, a personal pharmacist, a high-speed computer connection and maybe a sharp 12-year-old to help them navigate the Medicare Web site."
* Nashua Telegraph: The benefit is "off to a rocky start" because "the Bush administration and GOP leaders in Congress wanted to use 'competitive market forces' to deliver" the program, a Telegraph editorial states. The editorial adds, "Congress should be taken to task for developing a prescription drug plan that is so unclear and complex."
* Seattle Times: "The array of options and maze of forms" for the Medicare prescription drug benefit are "daunting."
Posted by schwitz at November 15, 2005 12:28 PM | TrackBack