Democratic Drug Reform Insufficient

Robert Laszewski says that the Democrats' plan to reform the drug benefits available under Medicare Part D is nothing more than a "hollow...charade." He suggests that campaign promises have turned out not to cohere with reality:

The problem is that when they got back to Washington they couldn't figure out a way to make their pledge work! It became clear that there weren't the savings in drug negotiation they had hoped for--so forget eliminating the gap.

More, they found out that the way you get real savings from negotiation is that you tell the drug companies if they don't give the Part D plans a great price they will be excluded from being offered--they won't be on the formulary.

All last year Democrats were critical of the Republican Part D plan for limiting benefits in one way or another. Now Democrats find out that if you really want to cut costs you have to limit benefits to do it. Yikes!!!

Read the substance of the analysis here.

Hat Tip: Joe Paduda