An unasked question


"Why does the government have to advertise free drugs for oldsters? "
Brendan Miniter asks it, but is anyone listening?

The campaign's commercials are more fitting for the launch of a new retail product than for the start of a program aimed at alleviating poverty and subsidizing seniors. In any case, it is odd to see commercials trying to persuade people to sign up for a benefit that was sold to the taxpaying public as a necessary thing--a help to people too poor to afford their own health care. Welcome to the age of marketed entitlements, where the war on poverty is an ad war.

Like any ad campaign, the one for the Medicare drug benefit needs celebrities to sell it. So Carol Burnett has been doing spots for the Texas-based United American Insurance Co. to encourage those on Medicare to sign up for the new plan. Scores of pharmacies and insurance companies have been partnering with the federal government, trying to get their share of the millions of new federal dollars available.

Walgreens is running ads promising that their cheerful staff will help baffled seniors read the fine print, the better to understand which of the plans is best for them. Of course, once granny is enrolled, the pharmacy "America trusts"--Walgreens--hopes there will be no confusion over where she should buy her medications.

As if there is not enough incentive for private companies to publicize this windfall, the federal government is spending $300 million on its own campaign to get 28 million or so of the 42 million Americans on Medicare to sign up for drug coverage. (Most of the rest already have equivalent or better drug coverage.) You wouldn't think that it would be so hard to get Americans on fixed incomes to sign up for freebees. But apparently it is.

Personally I think this program is going to cost trillions more than anyone is admitting. And it will ruin the free market for pharmaceuticals. That government money for the drugs is like a drug itself, the companies will quickly become addicted.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - January 13, 2006 at 04:47 AM  Tag


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