Q: Medicare Prescription Drug Discount cards are worthless, confusing, and need to be changed. What good are the discount cards if you can't be told the cost of your medication before it's filled? Even with a discount, one may not be able to afford the medicine. We should be able to find out the cost of each pill before we purchase. Our seniors, disabled, and consumers should be able to pay the same price for medication that Canada and Mexico are paying. If Congress can give themselves a $4,000 pay raise in 2005, please someone tell me why we can't get medication cheaper?
A: According to Lindsey Johnson, a consumer advocate at U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), it is possible to post drug prices. The state of New York for example, requires pharmacists to maintain a price list of the 150 top-selling prescription drugs and provide it to customers on demand. The Medicare website found at www.medicare.gov also provides dozens of prescription price comparisons using a confusing welter of drug discount cards. These efforts, however, fall far short of actually price tagging prescriptions in such a way as to allow consumers to comparison shop for their prescriptions as easily as they do for asprin.
According to Johnson, author of the U.S. PIRG study “Paying the Price,” different people often pay different prices for the same prescription at the same store. Prescription prices are often negotiated by insurance companies. Uninsured seniors and other uninsured consumers “carry the full cost of overpriced prescription drugs,” the study found.
The study confirms your reaction to the Medicare discount cards. According to Johnson, “once a Medicare recipient selects a drug discount card, he or she is limited to the discounts available through that card for the year. The companies selling the drug discount cards, however, can change the drug list and discounts at any time. Because enrollees have neither the freedom to change plans nor the ability to predict prices, real competition between card providers does not exist. Drug card providers have little incentive to lower prices.”
One of PIRG’s recommendations to provide consumers with immediate relief from high drug prices is to legalize prescription drug importation from Canada and other countries with drug regulatory systems similar to ours. TSCL supported the bi-partisan prescription drug reimportation legislation introduced by Senators Byron Dorgan and Olympia Snowe last year and continues to work for the passage of similar legislation.
Recently Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumers Reports, launched a web site to help consumers find prescription drugs to fit their budget — especially seniors and consumers with no prescription drug coverage. To see the Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs web site, visit http://www.crbestbuydrugs.org/.
Source: “Paying the Price,” Lindsey Johnson, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, October 2004.
February 2005
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