Medicare Part D: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
By Deborah Emin
When feminists of the 1970s declared that the personal was political, they could not have foreseen how the landscape of political affiliation was to change. We now find ourselves making a host of decisions about what car to drive, what types of shoes to buy, where to order food from, what shows to see and arts organizations to support, based not necessarily on the relative worth of those things, but on what our choices say about our political leanings. The most common of common denominators these days in the decision-making process is not what is good and just and fair and equitable but what indicates our allegiance to the left or to the right.
The list of issues requiring our attention grows longer every day, but the case in point here is the politicization of the new Part D prescription-drug plan for Medicare recipients. The first deadline for signing up has passed, and those who were facing this difficult and confusing decision found themselves struggling with two opposing problems. On the one hand, they had to make their way through a seemingly endless series of plans that might or might not save them money. On the other hand, they had to sign up for a plan, no matter which or what, in order to avoid the penalty for not making a decision by midnight on May 15.
This doesn’t seem to be the most practical way to ask people to make such an important choice. Beyond that, why the current Medicare program was insufficient from the start has never been properly explained.
Like many of the Bush administration’s dispensations of government money, whether for the war in Iraq or security in New Orleans, Medicare Part D reflects the Republican Party’s favoritism toward its biggest contributors – in this case the pharmaceutical industry. Many New Yorkers considered Part D a fantastic waste of money aimed at fixing something that wasn’t broke. On the day of the deadline, reported Congressman Anthony Weiner’s office, nine out of ten New Yorkers had not signed up.
As many now know through painful experience, the government – in its haste to get the plan up and running – had too few operators answering the telephones, and many of those operators had inaccurate knowledge of what each of some four dozen plans entailed.
But never mind that, this wasn’t about getting Part D to function well. Much of the hype for and animus against Medicare Part D has been based, not on the merits or lack thereof, but on who stands to win or lose come November when all of the representatives in Congress are up for re-election. Part D became a way of voting, and giving the administration yet another chance to hype itself.
Now think about it. In the race to make political hay out of our hard need for affordable drugs, our lawmakers and representatives have been allowed to employ medicine as a commodity and a political tool. My understanding of medicine is quite different: Part science and part art, it should never be used to frighten people or to win political debates. Worse still is the Bush administration’s wholesale refusal to consider a single-payment, equitable system of universal health care instead of this increased number of so-called “choices.”
That is the real crime and shame of this new program. The kinds of deals the Republicans made with the insurers and the pharmaceutical companies bear little resemblance to an act in the public interest. Come September when the so-called “donut hole” of the coverage manifests itself (i.e., when the large gap in benefits sets in) we shall see how this new plan begins to ripple throughout the country. At that point all those Republicans who have been insisting that their constituents think of Part D as a godsend might be wishing they had not spoken so glowingly of a plan that’s about to cover nothing for most of its recipients.
Anyone sent back to Congress this November should understand how crucial it is to remain true to this country’s entitlement programs, and accountable for the money we’ve been contributing by way of taxes all these years. More important than the political infighting or whether someone leans left or right is a concern for the health and well-being of all of us as we age. It is scandalous for politicians to treat a program like Medicare with the same tactics the government employed to sell an endless “war on terror.” If looming financial shortfall is truly threatening to undo the program, this deserves to be aired and accounted for.
I have worked and contributed through payroll taxes to Social Security and Medicare so that when I retire a certain safety net will be there to help me. The shocking notion that any elected official would advocate switching these funds out of a government-controlled account into Wall Street (as with Bush’s Social Security plan) or to the insurance and pharmaceutical firms (as with this Part D) makes me wonder who, exactly, such an elected official is representing.
More than any election in recent memory, the one coming up in November will send a clear message to the Administration about how we feel regarding its policies. I may lean left, but at this point I’d consider voting for anyone who protects those entitlements – not because I feel I am owed them, but because I have worked for them. I have worked toward my own security, as well as for the security of generations to come.
