Associated Press: Drug Makers Increased Prices Just Ahead of Discount Card, Study Says

Remember how President Bush touted all the savings that would be available under his new Medicare discount drug card? You should, he spent some of your tax dollars in television commercials to do it.

Well, it turns out that senior citizen customers won't save nearly as much money as the administration predicted. Why won't seniors save money? Because drug makers hiked the price of their products by three times the rate of inflation in the first three months of this year - just before the government began the discount card program. Popular drugs that battle osteoporosis, cholesterol, and general pain all increased more than average.

"Manufacturers are offsetting discounts with prices that are higher than they otherwise would have been," said AARP Policy Director John Rother. The end result is that consumer prices for drugs like Lipitor (a cholesterol reducer) are essentially unchanged from the pre-discount card days.

Nice.

Read about it here.