Save money: Eliminate Medicare Part D
To the editor:
Paul Howard’s March 17 Viewpoints essay on Medicare Part D, “The wrong way to reap savings,” is wrongheaded when it comes to basic reform. The statement “Conservatives like Part D because private plans bargain with drug companies over prices and then compete with one another for senior citizens’ business” is inconsequential.
What really matters are the prices seniors eventually pay. I’m now a four-year Part D veteran buyer, already enrolled in two high-deductible plans, Humana and UnitedHealthcare. In nearly every instance when I needed to make a prescription purchase, I found a pharmacy where I could purchase my drugs for less than my plan’s price, especially for generics.
“Part D premium costs to seniors have basically stayed flat in recent years,” Mr. Howard writes. Well, not for me. Private insurers usually offer a teaser plan rate for the first year. Then the price goes up the following year. Many seniors are a little slow on the uptake and are caught unaware.
My favorite statement from Mr. Howard was, “Medicare Part D has cost 30 percent less than initially projected by the Congressional Budget Office.” So what? The cost to all taxpayers is still $304 billion!
This program was an unfunded mandate pushed through in 2003 by President George W. Bush. Making all taxpayers’ fiscal matters even worse, this mandate prohibited Medicare, the largest single health insurer in America, from negotiating drug prices. Today only for-profit private insurers can negotiate price.
This brings the burning question: Why didn’t the current House budget wunderkind, Paul Ryan, propose saving money by eliminating the for-profit private insurance middleman and let Medicare negotiate for all Part D drug prices? After all, Veterans Affairs does it and saves money, so why not Medicare?
If Rep. Ryan is so hell-bent on reducing cost, he could take this a step further. Just kill this unfunded mandate. Like magic, $304 billion drops to the bottom line in his proposed budget.
RICHARD RYCHTARIK
LAS VEGAS
Food section
To the editor:
I agree completely with the Thursday letter from Mary Carter, who wrote you about her disappointment in your cancelling the Taste of the Town column. I’ve been a reader of your newspaper since coming to Las Vegas 17 years ago, and I always looked forward to the Wednesday edition because of the restaurant and food columns.
Who cares about columnist Doug Elfman’s comments on the goings on of the trash? I hope you’ll reconsider bringing back your most informative food column. I’m a novice with my computer, so I have no way of checking restaurants, but more than that, I enjoy the requests from people from other parts of the country looking for familiar foods.
I do hope you’ll consider putting the Taste of the Town column back. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
SYLVIA ENGEL
LAS VEGAS
Train to Victorville
To the editor:
I see some Nevada legislators support the XpressWest bullet train (Wednesday Review-Journal). Is that some kind of a joke?
My wife and I both have family in Southern California, and we go there very often. Does anyone in their right mind really believe that I’m going to take a train to Victorville, rent a car and continue down to my friends and relations — then do the same thing on my return? Who in their right mind wants to go to Victorville?
This train will be a bankrupt boondoggle worse than the Las Vegas Monorail. Can’t anyone see that?
ROBERT E. SMITH
LAS VEGAS
Get a grip
To the editor:
Good grief! I have never seen such an avalanche of letters to the editor about, of all things, our garbage pickup.
First are complaints about the smell of kitchen waste left in the garage. If you tie the bags up tightly and close the can lid the odor shouldn’t escape. If this can’t be done, then put the cans in the backyard, out of sight of the HOA snoops, and wheel them out on garbage day.
Get a grip, people. With all the things to rightly complain about these days, this should be near the bottom of the list.
BRUCE BROWN
LAS VEGAS
