Medicare Part D

The Medicare Part D outreach run by UCSF raises a whole host of contradictory thoughts. The first one is confirmatory of my initial thoughts about Part D which is that it was a Republican boondoggle designed to maximize corporate welfare and political hype. On the other hand, something is better than nothing and many/most of these seniors are certainly better off than they were before the program started. On the other hand (that's three for those counting at home) the program is so complicated that very smart, very engaged pharmacy students do not fully comprehend the ins and outs at times so how can you expect seniors to. Bottom line, Part D basically gets the job done but at a cost in terms of actual dollars and administrative complexity out of proportion to the benefit. A well-designed universal access system could easily do better.