I found this editorial in the Houston Chronicle:

The good news about the new Medicare drug benefit
Seniors are already seeing savings in prescription prices
By U.S. REP. TOM DELAY

TWO years ago, when Congress took up a bill to strengthen and improve Medicare and provide American seniors with a prescription drug benefit, I didn’t need any convincing. It was a good bill, a conservative bill, and the first time in history Congress introduced competitive, market-based reforms to a government bureaucracy created 40 years ago. It was the right thing to do, for seniors and for taxpayers.
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After almost a decade of promises — mostly from Democrats — and legislative negotiation — mostly by Republicans — we delivered. The final bill created the drug benefit, health savings accounts and other market-based reforms, all without raising taxes. It was a tremendous, bipartisan achievement.

In the two years since Congress passed and President Bush signed the largest entitlement reform bill in history, a lot has happened. The national agenda in that time has been understandably dominated by other issues, but this week’s opening of the registration period provides us an opportunity to assess the new program and begin to think about how it will impact our lives. Elected officials now have a responsibility to seize this opportunity to clarify, inform and educate.

First, the good news.

Though you may not have heard much about it, many of the most common prescription medicines used by American seniors have already seen their prices drop since Congress created the drug benefit two years ago. Indeed, the projected cost of the benefit to taxpayers has dropped $100 billion (14 percent) already because of the competitive reforms we introduced. Our decision to provide the drug benefit through private companies rather than a government bureaucracy has paid off in the diversity and affordability of the plans now available to American seniors. And finally, Congress’ goal to provide the most immediate and profound assistance to lower-income seniors is being met by the low-cost — in some cases free — plans being offered to them.

Tens of millions of seniors — including 500,000 in the Houston area — are now eligible to get the kind of low-cost, effective prescriptions that will not only save lives, but, in time, save money as well. Which is the better investment, helping seniors get medicine to stay out of the hospital, or paying for long, expensive hospital visits?

The obvious answer to that question is the reason Republicans — not Democrats, but conservative Republicans — passed this bill into law. It was a good bill, and the early results are bearing that out.

Of course, there is also some degree of confusion among seniors, their families and their health care providers.

“Which plan is best?” many ask.

“How do I sign up?”

“How do I compare plans if I don’t have Internet access?”

“Are the plans better than the insurance I may already have?”

These are natural questions, given the comprehensiveness of the change and the diversity of options seniors now have. That is why it is so important for public officials — those who supported the bill and those who didn’t — to reach out to seniors in their communities to provide assistance and information.

This ongoing dialogue is important not only for the program’s beneficiaries — to ensure they get the best coverage possible — but also for policy-makers, who are going to be continually called upon to modernize and strengthen Medicare to meet seniors’ changing needs.

For my own district, I organized several workshops and town hall meetings that gave me the opportunity to speak directly with seniors and to hear their concerns. Over the next few months, I will be holding even more of these workshops to help answer these questions and provide as much information as possible to sign seniors who are signing up for the program.

It seems to me every congressman and woman in the country ought to be holding them, too. There is already a major citywide event planned to help seniors enroll in the program on Jan. 28, and similar events will be planned across the state and nation in coming months.

This program can save lives, and it’s our job as public officials — and the media’s, as stewards of the public trust — to help it succeed for the sake of current and future seniors relying on us for their health care. We all know people struggling to get by because of their medical bills; this program is an opportunity for us to give them a chance.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2005 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Medicare Part D. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.