Senator to discuss drug costs
Published 9:00 pm Monday, March 15, 2004
Cordice Dinger-Dickson worries about getting sick and what it will cost her. Her friends do, too.
These days their concerns are amplified as they sift through reams of documents and wade through pools of rhetoric trying to understand whether a plan for paying the prescription drug tab of Medicare recipients is a good thing for all of them.
"To me, it’s very unsettling," the 86-year-old Arlington resident said Monday while volunteering at the front desk of the Stillaguamish Senior Center.
"Personally and from other seniors I’ve talked with, we have felt comfortable and we have felt safe with Medicare. With this new bill we do not feel safe. We need to know more about what this means to us."
On Monday, the Democratic senator spoke to about 100 seniors in Olympia, expressing grave concern that more seniors will be hurt by the law than are helped.
"It isn’t going to be the same Medicare program that you know today," the two-term senator told the crowd. "What we do know about this plan is very disturbing."
The law passed by Congress days before Thanksgiving and signed by President Bush on Dec. 8 launches a prescription drug benefit plan on Jan.1, 2006.
One of the key elements is a requirement that seniors contract with private insurers. Republicans say this feature will benefit millions of seniors and is cheaper than a Democratic proposal to incorporate a prescription drug benefit into the existing Medicare program. Democrats counter that it is a first step toward privatization that could leave many seniors with little or no benefits.
Under the law, seniors will pay a monthly premium and have some of their annual drug costs covered. The standard package includes a deductible of $250 and insurers paying up to 75 percent of costs up to an initial $2,000.
According to Murray, seniors pay all the costs between $2,250 and $5,100. Once the bills exceed $5,100, up to 95 percent of the bills could be covered by the insurer depending on the income of the individual. The law also offers credits of up to $600 a year for lowest income seniors.
Murray, who opposed the law, said its effects are not known because details on how it will work are not yet written. Her concerns are many. She wants the "doughnut hole" in which seniors receive no assistance to pay their drug bills eliminated. She’s also worried that enrollees with some insurers might be forced to leave their doctors and enter HMOs.
Also, she said it remains unclear whether thousands of seniors will lose a portion of their retiree benefits as predicted by the Congressional Budget Office.
Murray’s town halls this week come as the rapidly rising cost of prescription drugs heats up as an election issue.
Republicans are not giving ground on the program they designed but are warming to senior-backed proposals to allow increased importation of cheaper-priced prescription drugs from Canada. Democratic members of Congress, who long ago backed such a step, are focusing their criticisms on the prescription plan in hopes of winning back seniors who voted for Republicans in 2000.
To that end, Murray repeatedly warned that drug costs may not fall for most seniors and they should be speaking out.
"If seniors get angry enough in this country there will be changes with the law," Murray said.
