Drug Coverage a Bust.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: George W. Bush and Al Gore, presidential candidates - Brief Article

George W. Bush and Al Gore both have proposals for addressing the high cost of prescription drugs. Both are woefully inadequate.

What we need in this country is not tiny tinkering around the edges of a privately owned health care system. We need to junk that system and guarantee everyone the care and the prescription drugs they need.

Bush's proposal has two main parts.

The first is to give $48 billion to the states over the next four years to cover the costs of prescription drugs for low-income seniors.

"The states really handle health care in an uneven way," says Dr. Ida Hellander, executive director of Physicians for a National Health Program, based in Chicago. "This is a disastrous way to go."

The second part of Bush's proposal is to spend $110 billion to funnel Medicare recipients into HMOs.

This makes no sense at all.

The HMOs don't want them. And seniors don't want HMOs. In the last year, HMOs have dumped one million seniors from their plans.

Gore's proposal expands Medicare itself, which is a sensible way to go. But he doesn't go nearly far enough, and he would still force seniors to pay way too much in premiums and 50 percent in co-pays for medications.

"The great beauty of the Medicare program is that it has been relatively simple administratively from the senior citizens' point of view," says Hellander. "They can go to any doctor and any hospital and just show their Medicare card, and they get seen. It would be much simpler to say, `Now that card works at any pharmacy.'"

Neither Gore's nor Bush's plan offers such a simple, sane solution.

David McReynolds, the Socialist Party candidate for President, stopped by our office on August 21 to talk with the staff. After the interview we ran with him back in our February issue, we wanted to hear what he had to say in person.

The Socialist Party, he said, is on the ballot in ten states, though he could think of only eight of them. And the...