NACDS chief slams Bush Medicare discount policy process

As flawed as US President George W Bush's Medicare Prescription DiscountCard Initiative is, the policy process by which it was established is even worse, with White House policy staff "meeting secretly," according to Craig Fuller, president and chief executive of the US National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

"A small band of policy staff needed something to 'get out in front of the debate,' as one aide put it," writes Mr Fuller in his weekly on-line column on www/.monday.morning@nacds.org. "Unfortunately," he added, "they landed on a proposal to discount the value of the pharmacist that many of us could have warned would lead them away from the meaningful Medicare reform and pharmacy benefit for seniors that is of critical importance."

Should this plan ever actually be implemented, he says, the people who will have been given false hope will come to their neighborhood pharmacy to talk with their community pharmacist and find that: there is really no discount on the drug their doctor has prescribed; their pharmacy does not participate in the plan at all; or the plan insists they must accept a different medication to receive a saving.