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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (3095)	1/13/2006 1:49:23 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Take Our Money, Please! Why does the government have to advertise free drugs for oldsters? BY BRENDAN MINITER Friday, January 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST Medicare's prescription-drug benefit--with its huge costs and labyrinthine complexities--is already a notorious entitlement program, and it just began operating a couple of weeks ago, on Jan. 1. Little wonder, then, that its sponsor and "partners"--the federal government, insurance companies, drug retailers--have launched a slick ad campaign on its behalf. 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. Most of your tax dollars will be spent on pamphlets to help seniors figure out the system. There are simply too many private insurers offering seniors varying degrees of drug coverage at different prices for this new program to be a simple, orderly process of showing up at the pharmacy counter, flashing a Medicare card and walking off with cheap drugs. About $30 million in federal money is being spent on national TV spots. One ad, titled "Make You Look Good," targets adult children and friends of those on Medicare. A voiceover says: "Talk to someone close to you about New Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage. It can save them money, give them peace of mind and make you look good." It features a man in his 40s with his father, who notes with surprise: "My son just said something smart!" Unemployed? Divorced? High-school dropout? Just explain the new drug benefit to them, these commercials imply, and your parents will be proud again. Gary Karr, director of media affairs for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says one aim is to enlist the help of family members. Adult children are Internet savvy, have mastered the details of their own health insurance plans and can help parents and grandparents sign up. The ad campaign seems to be working. Despite the widely publicized political fight over passing the biggest federal entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, as of June only about 40% of Americans were aware that the drug benefit was coming. Today 80% are aware. But if it's really necessary for the government to pay for prescription drug coverage--if Americans are truly choosing between food and medicine, as so many politicians are fond of saying--why do federal officials have to spend so much time and money persuading people to sign up? If seniors are able to climb aboard buses and head for Canada to buy their medications at discounted prices without a government ad blitz, why can't they handle a few Medicare forms? In 2004, several Democrats did raise objections to federally funded prescription drug ads, but not for these reasons. Rather, they feared that such commercials would bolster President Bush's support before the election. Sen. John Kerry didn't have his own prescription drug plan to promote with federal dollars, so North Dakota's Sen. Kent Conrad sent U.S. Comptroller David Walker a letter asking whether taxpayer money was misused to create the ads. The General Accounting Office ultimately ruled that the ads were legal, though not "totally free of political content." How could they be? Maybe they are not promoting President Bush, but they are surely promoting the government, based on the very political notion that massive transfers of wealth are what's needed to solve our social ills. And if you believe that, you should see the ads for a bridge in Brooklyn the government wants to sell you. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays. opinionjournal.com