Medicare rolls out Web-based drug price comparisons for new discount card

Thursday, April 29th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Bush administration is starting a campaign to promote the value of the Medicare-approved drug discount card to older Americans who are only dimly aware of what it is.

Polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pharmacy Care Alliance, which is sponsoring a card, show that most Medicare beneficiaries know little about the card, including the $600 subsidy for low-income seniors.

The administration is aiming to change that, and quickly. It is mounting an $18 million television ad campaign through the end of May, calling on Republican lawmakers to aggressively promote the card to constituents and increasing funding to state agencies that help older and disabled Americans with questions about Medicare.

Medicare is to begin posting drug prices on its Web site on Thursday so people can compare which of the 40 national and 33 regional drug cards offer the best prices and at which pharmacies. The same information can be obtained by calling 1-800-Medicare.

Enrollment starts Monday, and the cards can be used starting in June. The discount card is a temporary measure meant to cut drug costs for Medicare recipients without drug insurance until 2006, when the Medicare prescription drug benefit begins.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Wednesday that people without prescription drug coverage who use the card would see average savings of 17 percent on brand-name drugs and 30 percent on generics.

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., said the discount card, part of the Medicare overhaul enacted last year, means seniors ``are not going to be facing the big drug companies alone.''

Democrats, who opposed the Medicare law as a giveaway to drug companies and insurers, have called the projected discounts exaggerated because they do not factor in the rapid rise in drug prices. They said Americans would see lower drug prices if the administration would permit prescription drug imports from Canada and elsewhere _ which the White House has so far resisted.

Allowing the government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies _ expressly banned in the Medicare law _ also would result in lower prices, Democrats said.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's campaign said Wednesday that the administration has so far wasted $40 million on two rounds of advertising to promote the president, rather than health care.

Recent polling suggests a stark need for an education campaign on the new law. The Kaiser poll earlier this month found fewer than four in 10 older Americans knew a drug card would be available this year and fewer than two in 10 were aware of the low-income subsidy.

The pharmacy alliance poll, conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide, focused on Medicare recipients who have no prescription drug coverage and found that most had little knowledge of the card or the subsidy.

This poll also showed that an effective campaign could make seniors look more favorably on the cards. The alliance is a partnership of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and Express Scripts, which manages prescription drug plans for employers.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services