Medicare Part 'D' A Success Story : Costs 40% Less Then Expected

Oh, No, this just can't be, something that actually worked in government and it was by George Bush - remember how this was demonized by the progressive socialist liberal left Democrats, and their pals in the media, when George Bush signed it into law and how the seniors loved it?

The agenda by the progressive democrats was to destroy the confidence in the program because it was proposed and passed into law by a Republican. That it might work was enough for the press to attack it in full force as a failure, just like they did when the unemployment rate under Bush was 4.6%. The media screamed the economy was headed to failure. Remember how this went, day after day of headlines howling for people to be fired to stop the bleeding and start us on the path of recovery.

Remember?  Managed news or out right lies? Misinformation on the front pages and the lettered channels? Remember? I wonder why the front pages are so clam about the details of the fraud and catastrophic failures of Obama?

Is it that they are progressive Democrats, and the press is running scared that their boy is a domestic and foreign policy nightmare? That the Obama agenda is willingly allowing the country to fail just can't be accepted? A progressive Democrat admitting failure? Never!

One thing we all can take as a fact, the progressives socialist liberal left democrats in congress and the mainstream press will never accept reality as a positive, reality is always a negative. Their power is in the narrative of charges of failure on the part of the opposition. It's the seriousness of the charge that is important, not the charge itself. The charge doesn't have to be true, just serious.

A Decade of Success: How Competition Drives Savings in Medicare Part D
Source: Paul Howard and Yevgeniy Feyman, "A Decade of Success: How Competition Drives Savings in Medicare Part D," Manhattan Institute, December 2013.
December 31, 2013

On December 8, 2003, then-president George W. Bush signed into law the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA). Without a doubt, the law created the most significant overhaul of Medicare in the program's history. As part of the MMA, a new, voluntary prescription drug program called "Medicare Part D" was enacted. Beginning in 2006, Medicare enrollees would also be able to sign up for outpatient prescription drug coverage through private insurance companies, with premiums subsidized by Medicare. To date, seniors have expressed high levels of satisfaction with the program, and Part D expenditures have been more than 40 percent lower than initial government estimates -- a rarity for a government health care program, say Paul Howard, a senior fellow, and Yevgeniy Feyman, a fellow, at the Manhattan Institute.

However, the program was controversial at the time of its launch in 2006 (and at the time of its passage). The root cause of Part D's success remains hotly disputed.

• Part D proponents attribute the law's success to competition driven by the use of private plans, competition, and private-sector cost-saving innovations.
• Critics attribute Part D's lower-than-expected costs to external factors unrelated to the program's design, such as lower-than-predicted enrollment as well as a general slowdown in national drug spending.

Howard and Feyman review data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Congressional Budget Office and other sources, to examine which factors -- market competition, patent expirations or other national trends (including private-sector innovations such as tiered formularies and preferred networks) -- explain overestimates for Part D costs.

In their analysis, Howard and Feyman find strong evidence that:

• National trends are not a sufficient explanation for Part D's success.
• Consumer-driven competition is a relatively new tool in the government's effort to control health care costs.
• Part D is an excellent model for future health care and entitlement reforms.

Howard and Feyman also suggest additional reforms for Part D, including a "shared savings" program for participating plans that would encourage them to focus on chronic disease management and prevention, reducing Medicare spending in other parts of the program.