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Congresswoman criticises US drug plan for elderly people

New York Janice Tanne

Plan D, the US Medicare drug plan that requires elderly people to sign up for a drug benefit, has been given a D for failure by a US Congressional representative in the New England Journal of Medicine (2006;354:2314-5). It “works better for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries than for beneficiaries,” she says.

Writing in a commentary, Congressional Representative Louise Slaughter of New York state, a Democrat and a microbiologist with a master’s degree in public health, called Plan D “the worst abuse of the legislative process I have seen during my 20 years in Congress.”

Medicare’s Plan D required all people older than 65 years to sign up for one of a confusing number of plans that offered drug discounts alone or drug discounts plus managed health care. People had to enrol by 15 May 2006 or face increased premiums. Medicare was forbidden to negotiate discounted . . . [Full text of this article]

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