Our view: Democrats must work with the Medicare administration to negotiate affordable prescriptions for seniors

The new Democratic majority in Congress should unscramble the Medicare Prescription Drug plan, making it more understandable to a wider audience.

Equally important, the Democrats can provide an essential service to the elderly by requiring the Medicare administration to negotiate discounts with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the cost of medicines.

The program, promulgated by President Bush with support from Republican congressmen and weak-kneed lobbyists from AARP in 2003, remains seriously flawed because it prohibits Medicare from using its considerable clout to negotiate discounts in drug prices.

A story by Star reporter Jane Erikson noted Monday that incoming Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Rep. Raúl Grijalva, both Democrats from Southern Arizona, are committed to working with House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi to authorize Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

Democrats in Congress say they'll deal with the issue of affordable drugs during the first 100 hours of the Congress that convenes in January.

Democrats took control of both the House and Senate in this month's midterm elections. It is important that Democrats use that victory as a mandate from voters who clearly are tired of the ideologically based decision-making that has characterized congressional actions during the last six years.
 
The prescription drug issue is a clear example of how ideology, as opposed to public interest, shaped a major piece of legislation. Republicans believed it was more advantageous to prohibit the government from negotiating drug discounts with pharmaceutical companies; instead, they voted for what they considered a free-market solution • allowing private insurance companies, those that would be providing the prescription drug benefit under what amounts to a government contract, to negotiate whatever deals they could arrange with the drug companies.
 
Since senior citizens are enrolled with many different insurance companies, the ability of each individual company to negotiate with the drug providers is ultimately diluted. A company insuring 20,000 clients has nowhere near the negotiating clout as one insuring 43 million, which is the number of Americans enrolled in Medicare.
In Monday's story, Giffords was quoted as saying, "Medicare should be benefiting seniors. It should not be benefiting the drug companies. We need to negotiate the best possible price for prescription drugs and pass that savings on to the consumer."
We agree, though it is naive to expect such negotiations to benefit only the consumers. As Giffords is undoubtedly aware, drug companies are in business to make money for their stockholders. What the 2003 bill ignored, and the new Congress can remedy, is a world in which both the consumers and companies benefit.
Simply stated, drug companies can still make large profits and provide deep discounts to a client like the United States that comes to the table with 43 million new customers.

Such a system is already in use by the Veterans Administration.
Politicians who free themselves of their ideological shackles can shape policies that benefit all Medicare recipients while assuring pharmaceutical companies of reasonable profits.

Other systems, such as the one in place at the moment, also will bring drug prices down, but not nearly as dramatically as a system in which Medicare is negotiating directly with the manufacturers.

Ultimately, the objective of government in a prosperous nation should be to provide health care, including medications, to senior citizens and others least able to pay high health insurance rates.
 
A government that takes this responsibility seriously must recognize that it benefits all of society if preventive medicine and treatment for illness is available to senior citizens and others. The alternative is to make all of society vulnerable to diseases and sicknesses carried by those who cannot afford treatment or the drugs that may cure them.

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Tucson, Arizona

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