The prescription drug program should be suspended until Congress designates specific spending cuts to finance it. Anything else is a flight from reality with ruinous consequences for our economy and our health.  Even if Congress can find offsetting cuts for this monstrosity, the case could be made that it is just not worth it.

What are retirees then to do?  At least they will be spared the “surprise” of rising premiums, rising deductibles, larger “holes” in the middle, and restrictive formularies as costs go into orbit.  Only the federal government can so effortlessly combine escalating costs and decreasing benefits.

It certainly can be a struggle to pay for prescription drugs in the last years of life, including the new expensive drugs that provide optimum benefits.  Many retirees are covered by their former employers’ retirement plans and private Medicare supplemental policies—in many cases superior to the new government program.  Those least able have access to Medicaid—as the rapid increases in spending for that program testify.

Other options for retirees should immediately be opened up that would cost a tiny fraction of the new program in forgone revenue.  Those who have already been researching prescription drug policies for the new program should be allowed to purchase similar polices free of tax, or by freeing up for that purpose Health Savings Accounts—the use of which is now highly restricted for those on Medicare.  Retirees, taxpayers, and pharmacists will also be spared the “cost of cost control” which the present bill entails, including the cost of 1,300 pages of new Medicare regulations (added to the 130,000 already in print), paperwork, and the salaries of new administrators, regulators and enforcers.

Perhaps one side benefit of delaying this confusing mess of a prescription program would be to provide funds for hurricane recovery.  The federal government could easily blow through these savings on other new spending.  But at least while recovering from natural catastrophes we would not be starting down the road to another disaster.