Drug Plan Needs This Fix

When he signs a bill today purported to help seniors afford prescription drugs, President Bush is expected to hail it as the biggest step forward for Medicare since the program’s 1965 inception. In fact, it is a needlessly complex and unaffordable mess of concessions to one special interest after another. Ramrodded through Congress after only a few early-morning hours of debate, it will offer meager benefits to most seniors.

Once the bill is signed, Congress can still fix it around the edges, and House Democrats will make a good start today. They plan to introduce legislation to correct the bill’s most shameful flaw: a provision, added at the drug industry’s request, that prohibits Medicare from using its immense bargaining clout to reduce prescription prices.

The Bush administration officials who helped write the bill -- foremost among them Medicare and Medicaid Director Tom Scully, who is now mulling over a lucrative job offer from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America -- say such bargaining would lead to price fixing. Sounds like Scully has already switched allegiances. Such negotiating over prices has been key to helping numerous government agencies -- such as state Medicaid programs and the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs -- keep the lid on drug costs.

The government bureaucrats negotiating such deals are not fixing prices in some antique socialist scheme. They are playing hardball in a global economy, competing against Canada and other nations that marshal their power to negotiate the best prices for their citizens.

If Bush wants to ensure that the bill is more benefit than boondoggle, he should endorse the Democratic bill. Surely he can see that if the government isn’t going to help control costs, then it has no business stopping the free market from doing so.