Expanding Medicare to Include Prescription Drug Coverage :: essays papers

Expanding Medicare to Include Prescription Drug CoverageIntroduction Throughout the past year of presidential campaigning, one of the top issues for both candidates has been that of whether or not there should be a prescription-drug avail added to Medicare. Both George W. Bush and Al Gore have proposed a plan to expand Medicare to include full prescription-drug reportage for ripened citizens receiving Medicare, at the expense of taxpayers. It is obvious why this issue has been such a priority for both candidates. Senior citizens vote at a frequently higher rate than other age groups. Both candidates know the importance of these senior citizen votes and believe that the proposal of adding a prescription-drug benefit is something that will appeal to a vast number of senior citizens. Both candidates have portrayed the issue as being very critical and as a serious task that needs to be addressed. The question, however, is whether or not such drug coverage is a worthwhile p roject to under deal. Is the problem indeed serious enough to counter for the role of reform that the candidates are proposing? Medicare is already a very costly program to keep up, and adding prescription-drug coverage would increase these costs even more. In social club to fund this project, there will need to be a tax hike. Should taxpayers subsidize this prescription-drug benefit? Is there a good reason why this redistribution should take place? What are the benefits and costs of this proposal? These and other questions will be addressed in this paper as we examine the following topics the need for senior citizens to have prescription-drug coverage, the political rhetoric involved with this issue, the projected shortfall in the budget of the Medicare program, and who really would benefit if a prescription-drug benefit was added to Medicare.Need for Prescription-Drug Coverage some(prenominal) people argue that the lack of a prescription-drug benefit is the major shortc oming of the Medicare program. But are Medicare recipients really in need of such a benefit? According to a study done by the AARP Public Policy Institute, about 25.6 million, or 65 percent, of noninstitutionalized Medicare beneficiaries already receive some type of prescription-drug coverage, whether it is through employer-sponsored health plans or individually purchased private health policies. This leaves about 13.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who are without prescription-drug coverage.