AARP to Seek a Better Drug Benefit

AARP, the preeminent organization representing older Americans, plans to ask Congress to change the new Medicare prescription drug program, in an effort to give more elderly people with low incomes extra help in paying for medicine and to create a bigger government role in drug prices.

John Rother, AARP's policy director, said yesterday that the group wants lawmakers to change a rule in the drug program that counts assets, such as a house, in determining which Medicare patients are poor enough to qualify for special low-income subsidies. AARP and many congressional Democrats tried to exclude assets when the law was being written in 2003.

Similarly, Rother said, AARP wants to reopen debate over a provision that would have directed health officials to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers over the prices they charge through the program. The law embraced a more market-oriented approach in which drugmakers negotiate prices with insurance plans that sell the drug benefit to patients.

AARP exerted heavy influence in the politics that created the program, endorsing the legislation shortly before it passed a bitterly divided Congress. At the time, Rother said the group might want to "build on it in the future." The White House has said it does not want Congress to reconsider any aspects of the law, which has come under renewed scrutiny this month as the program took effect amid widespread complaints that elderly people are having difficulty getting their medications.

Meanwhile, 19 House Democrats sent President Bush a letter, asking him to "level with the public" during his State of the Union address on Tuesday about what they called "the frustration the American people are experiencing" with the early stage of the drug program. Democrats have been promoting a bill that would make fundamental changes to the drug benefit, including the government negotiations with pharmaceutical manufacturers that the AARP wants.

-- Amy Goldstein