RespiteMatch.com Health Blog

Ticked off no end by my column today describing the Medicare drug benefit as a fiasco and a scam, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, responds with a letter to our editor. Thomas was an architect of the disaster, so perhaps we can understand his defensiveness. The letter reads as follows:

Michael Hiltzik’s diatribe about the Medicare drug benefit [”Medicare Drug Plan Looks Like a Big Scam,” 1.19.06] is a cynical attempt to scare seniors away from a program that helps them.

After just three weeks, the program is filling 40,000 prescription drug claims per hour. Nearly four million people have voluntarily signed up for coverage. Real people are saving real money.

Hiltzik tries to divert seniors’ attention away from these savings by comparing apples to oranges when talking about outdated cost estimates for the overall program – estimates that will be continually updated as the program moves forward. The bottom line is that competition is working – seniors are saving money on prescriptions.

While the Medicare drug benefit faced some early implementation challenges, those issues are being resolved; for millions of people the program is literally a life-saver.

The only scam here is the way Hiltzik is scaring money and medicine right out of seniors’ pockets.

These paragraphs are all proud representatives of a species known as the red herring. “The program is filling 40,000 drug claims per hour”? What, every hour? Since when? And compared to what level of claim response that it should be recording?

“Nearly four million people have voluntarily signed up for coverage.” Great; that leaves only 19 million eligibles still on the sidelines.

“Hiltzik… [cites] outdated cost estimates for the overall program.” Sure they’re outdated. The latest figures are even higher.

Thomas’s most shameless contention is this one: “While the Medicare drug benefit faced some early implementation challenges, those issues are being resolved; for millions of people the program is literally a life-saver.” First, those issues still haven’t been resolved, at least not as of yesterday. Second, the reason the program has been a “life-saver” is that 26 states have stepped in to manage the health emergency caused by the dereliction of Medicare administrators and their handmaidens in the health insurance industry. Meanwhile, the Administration refuses to commit to reimbursement. Is Rep. Thomas promising any money for this state, which he represents, and which may spend hundreds of millions? He doesn’t say. What a guy.

Thomas, of course, was an author of the Medicare drug bill, not to mention a leading man in the early-morning comedy of arm-twisting and political extortion that led to its narrow House passage in 2003. Stand up and take a bow, Bill.