Letter to the Editor:

Re "Medicare's first step," editorial, March 19: Modeling the Medicare prescription drug plan after the Veterans Affairs plan is hardly a "step forward." The VA drug formulary is extremely restricted. Only 19 percent of drugs approved by the FDA since 2000 are listed on the VA formulary. Only 38 percent approved in the 1990s are listed.

Government intervention has already choked off drug innovation virtually everywhere else. This is why people the world over use cancer and AIDS medications invented in the United States. If we mandate price controls here, more life-saving breakthroughs will be lost. A new study by Columbia Business School Professor Frank Lichtenberg found that the VA formulary may be having a negative impact on veterans' life expectancy.

Outdated medicine, stifled research and reduced life expectancy are a steep price that the nation's 40 million Medicare recipients cannot afford.

Sally Pipes,
San Francisco President and CEO,
Pacific Research Institute