Truth in Politics

Dean Baker writes another good article about insurance companies raising Drug prices to Enrollees. He perhaps should define exactly that he is talking about Enrollees under the Proscription D program, who have relatively no real practical ability to switch insurance carriers. He may or may not understand the real Goal of such Price raises, simply justification of raising the monthly deductible every month, though the announced increased deductible is charged only once a year. It is a continual process to adjust Enrollee thinking to the eventual deductible rise. Why must this be done?

The Answer is simple: The Enrollees have generally been on the same Proscription drugs for extended periods of time. A hazard would say this is true for over 70% of the Enrollees. It is also easily predictable that over half of these Proscription drugs are past their Patent Date, and must be considered generic. Truth states that Production methods has actually lowered the Production Cost of most of these Drugs. This fact does not suit either the Drug companies, or the Insurance companies who consider higher monthly deductibles as Income. Neither industry can count on the increased deductibles, based on either Production Cost or Patent royalty. They still wish to raise the monthly premium deductibles paid at the same rate of total Medical Costs increases, around Ten percent per Year, as this Money is their rolling Operational Income.

There will never be a Congressional Investigation of the practice of setting these monthly premium deductibles for Enrollees under Proscription D clause, because of the heavy political campaign contributions made by both Drug and Insurance companies. The realistic fact resides in reality, though, that the new year increase in monthly premium deductibles for Enrollees was not based upon real Cost increases to the program fulfillment. Insurance and Drug companies simply want to return Enrollees to the Cost position they held prior to the implementation of Proscription D, because Enrollees had already shown their ability to meet such Expenses; while they retain the huge largesse granted by the Federal Government by the Proscription D program in the first place. lgl