Medical News Today rounds up opinions from major newspapers on Medicare’s new (and confusing) prescription drug program.
A large part of the problem is government bureaucracy. From the Los Angeles Times (free registration):
Pharmacists are having trouble finding out which plan people are enrolled in, forcing some to leave pharmacies empty-handed. The most desperate are showing up at emergency-room doors hoping to get the medication they were promised. Meanwhile, waits on help lines set up by the government and private insurers have stretched into hours.
In some cases, the lack of prescription drug medication may be life-threatening, so the government and private insurers need to address the problem and address it quickly. But others don’t see Medicare’s changes as problematic at all.
Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress director Robert Goldberg insists that the choices and free-market competition offered by the new plan are good. Patients get to choose which plan they want based on its features. As a result, drug plans must find ways to retain current patients and gain new ones. For example, over 100 new drugs have been added to the selections. Goldberg writes:
I find it incredible that the media and liberal elite think that millions of people who choose homes, retirement communities, colleges for their children and insurance plans will somehow be unable to be part of what is really the first large-scale example of a true consumer health care product.
Goldberg is correct, of course. The free market is a good thing, but some patients may not have the capacity to make informed decisions. In principle I believe it’s better for patients to make choices rather than have government do it for them. Competing factors such as the cost of the program, the amount of confusion it causes, how many people actually benefit in practice and not just in theory, etc., must be weighed.
