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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
Last year, I reported Ella White Campbell's disturbing realization that her elderly mother was taking less of her life-sustaining medicine than her doctor had prescribed. She could not afford the necessary dosage.
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) confirms that Americans over 65 pay more for their prescriptions than they do for their doctors' care. According to the Health Care Financing Administration, spending on prescription drugs increased by 15.4% in 1998 (while total health care costs rose 5.6%).
Nearly two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries, however, have no prescription drug coverage or have coverage that is inadequate, costly and subject to cancellation at any time. As a result, one of every eight elderly Americans must choose between food and the medicines their doctors prescribe.
If we were creating Medicare today, we would include a voluntary prescription drug benefit for all Medicare beneficiaries. We should do so now, as President Clinton has proposed. Medicare-based prescription drug coverage for all senior citizens is a moral and practical necessity.
Under the President's plan for voluntary prescription coverage, Medicare would pay 50% of seniors' annual prescription costs up to $1000 (increasing to $2,500 in 2009). The premium for participating seniors would be about $26 per month in 2003 (increasing to $51 per month six years later).
There would be no deductible, however, and beneficiaries with incomes below 135% of poverty would not be charged any premiums or cost-sharing charges. Participants with incomes between 135% and 150% of poverty would receive some assistance with these costs.
Republicans and their allies among the drug manufacturers are resisting the President's plan. They most adamantly oppose use of the federal government's purchasing power to secure lower prescription prices for Medicare beneficiaries.
"What the drug industry is interested in is disguising the cost of drugs in the overall health plan payment so the drug prices never come up for congressional scrutiny," AARP Legislative Director John Rother recently observed.
Mr. Rother's comment reaches the heart of the problem: the high cost of prescription drugs. Last Mothers' Day, I observed a woman at my neighborhood pharmacy reluctantly settle for a 15-day supply of medicine because she could not afford $191 for 30 pills.
Last year, I instructed the Democratic staff of the Government Reform Committee to determine why Baltimore's seniors are being charged so much for their medicine. The congressional report I released in May of 1999 found that uninsured Baltimore seniors must pay more than twice as much for their medicine as the drug companies' preferred customers (like the government and large HMOs).
In August of last year, our continuing investigation determined that drug manufacturers' prices to uninsured Baltimoreans were 98% higher than Canadian prices and 95% higher than those in Mexico. We discovered this February that the manufacturers charge over twice as much for popular human drugs than when those same drugs are sold for use by animals.
Our research also revealed that local drug stores do not cause this pricing disparity. Rather, drug manufacturers raise the wholesale prices of medicines sold to uninsured senior citizens to compensate for the discounts they give to their large, preferred customers.
At present, drug companies are utilizing market forces in a way that is unfair to senior citizens and contrary to our national interest.
No senior citizen, however, should be forced to choose between food and medicine. A just society does not allow its elders to be exploited.
Medicare should offer all senior citizens an affordable prescription drug benefit. To achieve that goal, however, we must use the government's buying power to establish a fair price for the Medicare prescriptions we purchase.
Market power is an important factor in the economics of survival a force the federal government must employ in defense of our senior citizens and their families. As a wealthy nation in which the top 10 drug manufacturers are reaping annual profits that surpass $20 billion, we must provide our people with the medicine they need to live quality lives.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
