Wu to introduce Medicare prescription drug reform

During a visit to his district May 25, Oregon Congressman David Wu said he plans to introduce a bill to reform the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act, which he supported when it passed last November.

The act kicked in last month with a Prescription Drug Discount Card program which has been much criticized for its large-ish complexity and smallish benefit. Beginning in 2006, the act will offer a larger prescription drug benefit to seniors. Under the law, the government would pay for prescription drugs, but could not bargain a good price for them. And the law prohibits anyone helping seniors to import drugs from Canada or other countries.

“I continue to believe despite its faults, that this bill helps the poorest seniors and the sickest seniors, and that’s what Democrats are about,” said Wu, a Democrat representing Oregon’s First Congressional District.

Wu was one of only 16 House Democrats to vote for the bill, which passed the House by five votes Nov. 22, 2003. [In the Senate, Oregon’s Ron Wyden was one of 11 Democrats to vote in favor; nine Republicans voted against it, but it passed 54-44. John Kerry did not cast a vote.]

Wu told an invited audience at the downtown Portland YWCA that three things about the law need to be fixed: its ban on drug reimportation; its ban on bargaining a good price for the drugs, and its coverage gap, known as the “donut hole,” in which the government helps pay for prescription drugs up to the first few thousand dollars, but then seniors pay all the costs above that, up to a certain amount.

Wu said his bill, which had not been introduced as of press time, would include all three of these fixes.

It may have to get in line. For instance, at least five other bills have been introduced in the House that would reform the act by allowing price negotiation. House Resolution 3767, introduced by Marion Berry of Arkansas, has 35 co-sponsors. HR 3672, introduced by Chet Edwards of Texas, has 107 co-sponsors. And HR 3707, introduced by Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri on Jan. 20, has 164 co-sponsors (including Wu, who signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill April 21 after about 150 others had done so.)

“[The Medicare Modernization Act] is not good for seniors,” said Fran Landfair, chair of Elders in Action, after Wu’s May 25 announcement. “Elders in Action was very dismayed by the passage of this bill.”

Landfair appeared with Wu at the announcement, alongside Michael Arken, head of the Oregon chapter of the union retirees group Alliance for Retired Americans, which also opposed the act.

Wu said he voted for the act hoping to fix its problems later.

Asked how the Democrats will be able to reform the law if they didn’t have the unity or voting strength to stop it, Wu pointed to signs that proposals to allow drug reimportation are gaining momentum.

Wu agreed that it will be harder to get the Republican leadership to approve using government bargaining power to pay less for prescription drugs – if the government pays a lower price for the drugs it buys, that’s less money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, whose Washington, D.C., lobby wrote the bill in the first place.

But Wu pointed out that a group of about 20 Republicans who voted for the bill have since expressed their anger at being misled, when it came to light after the bill’s passage that Bush Administration officials had silenced a mid-level staffer who determined the cost of the program would be $525 billion over 10 years, not $400 billion as claimed by the bill’s backers.

“Even a Republican would pass this [reform] bill as the cost goes up,” Wu said.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.