There is one thing the 78 percent of seniors who already have prescription drug coverage should know: If the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003 becomes law, there will be no reason for their former employers to continue to offer prescription drug coverage.
The House and Senate each deliberately ignored the Joint EconomicCommittee's sober warning when passing different versions ofMedicare legislation (H.R. 1 and S. 1), providing a universal drugentitlement: That entitlement will massively disrupt, one way oranother, existing private drug coverage for millions of seniors,particularly the drug coverage provided by employer plans.
House and Senate Medicare conferees are scrambling to find asolution to the problem of senior dumping - which will occurwhen former employers drop current retirees into the proposed newgovernment entitlement. Roughly 10 million seniors have nocoverage. It is not too late for Congress to help those in needwithout hurting those who are not.
Thirty-seven percent of all retirees with employer-based drugcoverage would lose it under the Prescription Drug and MedicareImprovement Act of 2003, the Medicare bill recently adopted by theSenate Finance Committee. Medicare reform should be a policysuccess, not another vehicle for the expansion of bureaucraticcontrol over the financing and delivery of health care services.
Millions of American seniors have worked hard their entire lives in the belief that they would receive health insurance benefits, including coverage for prescription drugs, from their employer after retirement. But if Congress does create a universal Medicare drug entitlement based on bills now before a House-Senate conference, the retiree drug coverage many seniors were promised by their employers will be in peril.