'Doughnut Hole' in Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
Is Just One of Its 'Awful' Features, Krugman Writes

The "doughnut hole" in the new Medicare prescription drug benefit -- a gap in coverage when drug costs for a year reach $2,250 to $5,100 -- will cause beneficiaries "with high drug costs [to] have relatively low out-of-pocket expenses for part of the year. ... Then, suddenly, they'll enter the doughnut hole, and their personal expenses will soar," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes in an opinion piece.

Although it would be "smart" for beneficiaries with high drug expenses to buy "supplemental insurance that would cover the doughnut hole," the 2003 Medicare law "specifically prohibits you from buying insurance to cover the gap," Krugman writes.

This problem is "only one of the bill's awful features," he says, adding that the benefit might cause U.S. residents to "learn a bi[g] lesson:politicians who don't believe in a positive role for government shouldn't be allowed to design new government programs."

Krugman states that the bill was passed because Republican Congressional leaders "weren't actually trying to protect retired Americans against the risk of high drug expenses"; instead, "[t]heir purpose was purely political: to be able to say that President Bush had honored his 2000 campaign promise to provide prescription drug coverage by passing a drug bill, any drug bill." Krugman says that the drug bill can be fixed, but, he concludes, "We won't have a drug benefit that works until we have politicians who want it to work"