Boston Globe Doesn't Like Bush's "Drug Plan" Either

No wonder less than 10% of Americans have signed up for it. It's a case where not understanding may save you, since you have to go HMO rather than stay in regular Medicare to get coverage.

Here:

For starters, coverage is woefully inadequate. You pay a $250 deductible and then a 25 percent copay on the first $2,250 of drug benefits each year, plus roughly another $450 a year in premiums. So if your prescriptions cost $2,250 a year, or about $190 a month, you pay $1,200 a year all told and the plan pays just $1,050.

That's pretty shabby. But then, the truly bizarre feature of the plan kicks in. Coverage simply disappears for the next $2,850 in drug expenses and only picks up again when you have incurred a total of $5,100 in prescription costs. This is the infamous ''hole in the doughnut."

A great many seniors will never get the coverage because the plan is a bad bargain, and they just won't sign up. Of if they do sign up, they will run out of the ability to pay enough out of pocket before qualifying for needed benefits. Even with these disgracefully skimpy benefits, the plan is expected to add over half a trillion dollars to the federal budget over the next decade.
Why would anyone have designed such an insane program?

Because the political purpose was never to deliver good benefits. One administration goal, running the program through the private insurance industry, conflicted with the imperative of a clear, cost-effective plan. Seniors must evaluate innumerable competing private plans, each with subtle differences in costs and benefits that make an impenetrable program even less fathomable, and raise total costs because each of these private plans tacks on a profit. This was a case of privatizing something done far more efficiently through a direct government program.