Editorials Respond to Medicare Part B Premium Increase

Three recent editorials react to the announcement that Medicare Part B premiums will increase 17.5% in 2005 and the responses of President Bush and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) to that announcement.

• Denver Rocky Mountain News: The "tit-for-tat" between Bush and Kerry about Medicare "completely misses the mark," a Rocky Mountain News editorial states. The editorial adds that Bush "has a lot to answer for" in signing the Medicare legislation, while Kerry "is fond of recommendations that would be more threatening if they became law," such as his belief that the government should negotiate Medicare drug prices, which the Rocky Mountain News says would be "a form of price control that would almost inevitably lead to shortages of some drugs." The editorial concludes, "One thing is for certain: There is a legitimate and serious debate to be had over Medicare reform, without which the eventual suffering could be great" (Denver Rocky Mountain News, 9/17).
  


• New York Times: The Medicare premium increase is not an "issue than lends itself readily to a blame game," a Times editorial says, noting that "Medicare's problems will not be solved until the underlying problem of the rapid rise in health care costs is solved." Noting that Kerry "urges a war on waste and fraud, which sounds appealing but is unlikely to produce huge savings," and Bush "says private-sector competition is the answer, but that idea seems delusional," the editorial concludes that neither candidate "is going to produce any short-term relief for older people who can't afford the premium increase" (New York Times, 9/17).
  


• Minneapolis Star Tribune: Although there are "many reasons for the sobering jump in Medicare premiums," the news is "one more sign that the Bush administration has botched health care policy in general and Medicare reform in particular," according to a Star Tribune editorial. The editorial says that the administration "let insurance lobbyists and drug manufacturers write key provisions of last year's massive Medicare Modernization Act, deliberately and egregiously concealed the bill's true cost until Congress had passed it into law, and then embarked on an expensive campaign to convince America's elderly that the law has done them a huge favor" (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 9/16).