This summer I joined forces with a tri-partisan team of senators to introduce permanent Medicare drug coverage for the 40 million elderly and disabled Americans who rely on the government health insurance program to help pay for their medical needs. For months we worked across party lines to come up with the prescription with the right policy and the right politics to get the job done. As the top ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which bears the responsibility to write all Medicare laws, I've pushed for a package that reflects 21st century health care and recognizes the long-term budget picture relative to the looming retirement of the Baby Boomers.
Adding a prescription drug benefit became a defining campaign issue in the last presidential election. However, the debate was pushed to the back burner after Sept. 11 when the nation's attention was riveted to ensuring national security and protecting the homeland. But the time has come to move the issue back to the front burner and welcome Medicare into the 21st century.
Medicare as we know it is old-fashioned and provides out-dated coverage for today's standard outpatient services and breakthrough medicines. We are sitting on the opportunity of a lifetime to modernize the way retired seniors and the disabled access modern medicine. But why should taxpayers foot the bill for government-subsidized drug coverage? It boils down to three basic principles: access, affordablity and fairness.
Today, this segment of the U.S. population does not enjoy the same standards of prescription coverage that most private-sector and public-sector employees have come to expect. These are folks whose hips and knees pound with arthritis pain. Or they may suffer from glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration which leads to blindness. The right prescription drug can stem the dizzy spells caused by high blood pressure. Indeed, today's pharmaceuticals can greatly improve the quality of life long into one's retirement years and extend independent
lifestyles. However, for too many of the elderly poor and many ordinary retired Americans, the high cost of medicines is preventing them from affording these life-changing, indeed life-saving, treatments.
Washington sits on the brink of a major breakthrough. For the first time in nearly 40 years, Congress has the opportunity to restructure the Medicare program to greatly enhance medical coverage for today's current and future retired and disabled population. But the biggest stumbling block appears to be election-year politics. The Democratic leadership in the Senate seems bent on creating a wedge campaign issue for the fall election instead of enacting a
realistic, affordable, permanent drug benefit.
The plan I introduced in July would seek to drive down the soaring costs of prescription medicines through competitive plans offered by private insurance companies. Medicare would subsidize the costs. Our plan is comprehensive, voluntary, and open to all Medicare beneficiaries. Each enrollee would pay just $24 a month with an annual deductible of $250. Medicare would pay 50 percent of drug costs from $251 to $3,450 each year. After the patient had spent $3,700 in any given year, Medicare would cover 90 percent of all drug expenses for the rest of the year. It also offers special protections for low-income seniors with incomes up to $14,200 for individuals and up to $17,910 for married couples.
We've worked hard to develop a comprehensive plan that improves and strengthens
Medicare. It offers the best benefit we can buy with our budget. In contrast, the Democratic leadership is bent on dangling a pie-in-the-sky prescription plan that would bust the Medicare piggy bank. And theirs has virtually no chance to reach bipartisan consensus.
Our plan offers a universal benefit that gives Medicare beneficiaries a choice to select the prescription drug coverage that best suits their needs. Our tri-partisan 21st Century Medicare Act would guarantee that at least two competing prescription drug plans would be made available in all areas of the country, including traditionally under-served rural areas.
What's more, our plan also takes long-overdue steps to strengthen and improve Medicare's basic benefit package. In addition to adding prescription drug coverage, our bill would add catastrophic protection and free preventive care. It's voluntary. It's universal. It's doable. It's time to deliver modernized Medicare once and for all.