The Medicare Gold Rush

Dee Mahan
August 30, 2005

Dee Mahan is deputy director of health policy at Families USA.

Come mid-November, along with the familiar autumn sounds of crackling fires and crunching leaves, there will be confusion in the air, too. That’s because open enrollment for Medicare Part D, Medicare’s drug benefit, will be starting. More than 40 million seniors and people with disabilities who rely on Medicare will have the difficult job of sorting through what promises to be an abundance of choices for drug coverage. For some—those who have no drug coverage now and who qualify for low-income subsidies—Medicare Part D may be a real improvement. But many, if not most, of those enrolled in Medicare are likely to find the coverage disappointing, the process of picking a plan unduly daunting, and their remaining drug costs surprisingly high.

And it’s not just seniors who may be facing sticker shock. Controversy around the program’s budget assumptions continues in Washington as the projected pricetag for the benefit rises. Recalling the refrain of Harry and Louise, the seniors who were insurance company props lamenting Clinton’s health plan in 1990s television commercials, "There’s got to be a better way.” There was. It just didn’t happen.