Talking points: Bush Medicare law and drug plan
Summer 2004
Key reasons the Bush Medicare law fails workers and retirees
- Dismantles traditional Medicare fee-for-service program, as we know it, through privatization and capping future Medicare spending.
- Does nothing to control future health insurance (prices) inflation.
- Gives employers, HMOs and drug profiteers too much control over health care decisions of individuals.
- Forces Medicare beneficiaries to pay more for doctor visits as the Part B deductible is means-tested and raised every year.
- Threatens the Medicare structure by allowing wealthy retirees to shelter income from federal taxes.
Key reasons the Bush drug plan fails workers and retirees
- The Bush drug plan is too complex, and there is too little information available to individuals and businesses to choose a drug plan.
- The Bush drug plan complicates future collective bargaining negotiations for health insurance benefits because it’s very difficult to determine future costs, and it encourages employers to abandon current benefits to save money.
- The Bush drug plan gives much more financial incentives to HMOs, big corporations, private insurers and drug profiteers, and fewer dollars for Medicare beneficiaries/retirees.
- The Bush drug benefit is inadequate, will increase out-of-pocket costs for individuals, and does not guarantee the drugs a beneficiary may need.
- Not only does the Bush drug plan do nothing to control how much money pharmaceutical companies can charge for prescription drugs, it prohibits the U.S. Government from using its group purchasing power to lower costs for prescription drugs, and prohibits Americans from purchasing U.S.-made drugs from Canada or overseas.
- The Bush drug plan forces dual eligible Medicare & Medicaid recipients into inferior private drug coverage with higher co-payments.
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