About a year ago, the Bush administration stunned many people when it projected that the prescription drug benefit for Medicare would cost $534 billion over a decade, one-third more than the figure that had been used to sell it to a wary Congress.
That news came out just two months after the bill squeaked by Congress, which thought it was voting for a $395 billion benefit.
Wait. It gets worse.
The newest cost estimate is $724 billion.
The original 10-year budget figures included 2004 and 2005, in which the full benefit had not yet started. Seniors could get Medicare-sponsored drug discount cards but could not apply for reimbursement for drugs under the Medicare plan. Those obviously would be relatively cheap years, rendering the decade-long cost lower and more palatable to conservatives who had doubts about adding an expensive new entitlement.
The new figure covers 2006 to 2015, and is a far more accurate estimate of what the real cost of this benefit is likely to be.
Beyond the first decade, the expense of this entitlement shoots for the moon. In the second decade, with millions of Baby Boomers retiring, spending could soar to $1.3 trillion to $2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
This thing has to be stopped.
The Medicare prescription drug benefit was sold with false numbers, is badly designed and is far, far too expensive for the federal government to absorb. Congress never likes to taketh away after it giveth, but it has to repeal this program.
The president and members of Congress are now debating the future of Social Security, which is of genuine concern. But the Medicare train wreck is bearing down just as quickly.
The Medicare trust fund that pays for in-patient hospital care for millions of seniors will be unable to pay all of its bills by 2019, according to a report released last March. The report said that spending for Medicare would surpass that for Social Security by 2024. But Congress isn’t dealing with the looming financial problems in Medicare. It’s busy making things worse.
Given the increasingly grim fiscal realities, taxpayers might have expected the government to choose carefully which drugs to cover, setting priorities for those drugs that target serious illness. But like so many other government programs, once the entitlement begins, the largess is nearly boundless. A prime example: Under the new benefit, Viagra and other sexual performance drugs will be covered.
In 2003, President Bush portrayed his push to pass the drug benefit as a promise kept to seniors. But he has also made a promise to all Americans to cut the deficit and rein in entitlement programs that threaten the nation’s long-term fiscal health. The time to do that is now, before the drug benefit takes on a life of its own.
