Whereas seniors only represent 12 percent of the population, they use more than one-third of all the prescription drugs used in the U.S. each year. Finally, due to the great advances in pharmaceuticals, prescription drugs now play a much more central role in the typical senior's health care. Plus, these very life-extending drugs are some of the most expensive on the market. Because Medicare is the largest and most efficient means of getting decent health care to the greatest number of seniors, there have been a number proposals offered to create a prescription drug benefit for the program. It does not have one now.
Prescriptions are the most obvious and usual reason.
Approximately 13 million Medicare beneficiaries go without any coverage for drugs at all. Medigap policies are not always reliable. Medigap premiums vary widely throughout the nation but are consistently 2 to 3 times higher than average health care policies. A number of proposals have been developed to reverse this trend toward unaffordable prescription drugs. The Clinton Administration came out with an aggressive Medicare prescription drug proposal on June 29, 1999.