New Drug Benefit Excludes Many

The new Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit is likely to exclude somewhere around 2 million low-income people, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The exclusion is based on personal assets, which according to the plan, makes them ineligible despite their low income.

A disproportionate share are older, widowed women with modest incomes who live alone, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly 60 percent of these women, and others who live alone, have life savings of no more than $51,500, the study found. For married couples, the figure is $63,000.

And why was this restriction put in place?

Republican lawmakers added the eligibility restriction to the Medicare Modernization Act because they were under pressure to keep the drug benefit's 10-year price tag below the widely touted but erroneous figure of $400 billion. The benefit would have cost an additional $10 billion without the limits, Medicare figures show. In fact, the whole program is now estimated to cost $534 billion over 10 years, with some estimates as high as $1.2 trillion.

So, there will be close to 2 million people excluded from this plan, because they actually had a fair amount of savings and because the fiscally responsible Republicans didn't want to raise the projected price of the program by 2.5%, although the plan will clearly dwarf the projections anyways. I really wonder if the people in power have their priorities straight. Dreams of fiscal responsibility vs. sick grandparents...

Full Article at OC Register.