Dispute Over Medicare Plan to Cover Erectile Treatments

The New York Times > National: "Bush administration officials said Tuesday that the new Medicare drug benefit would generally pay for erectile dysfunction pills like Viagra and Levitra when they were medically needed. But Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, said he would introduce a bill to prohibit Medicare payment for what he called such 'lifestyle drugs.'

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. King said: "We are promoting abstinence for young people with raging hormones, and yet we are going to ask them to pay taxes for sex-enhancing drugs for seniors? In good conscience, I cannot support that. We have only a finite amount of money. When Medicare covers Viagra pills, you are, in effect, taking money away from someone else's life-saving drugs."

Mr. King said he found no basis for such spending. "There are only two reasons for sex," Mr. King said. "One is procreation, and the other is recreation. If we are going to subsidize someone's recreational sex, I don't think that's what our founding fathers had in mind."

Viagra, made by Pfizer, was approved by the F.D.A. in 1998 for treatment of erectile dysfunction. Since then, the agency has also approved Levitra, marketed by Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline, and Cialis, made by Eli Lilly & Company and the Icos Corporation, for treating the same condition. Drugstore.com, an online pharmacy, sells 10 tablets of Viagra for $90.99 and 30 tablets for $259.97.

Lawmakers from both parties, especially conservatives, say the federal government should not dictate coverage of specific drugs. Medicare officials, trying to strike a balance, say that the government will not establish a uniform list of covered drugs, but that competing drug plans must pay for medicines commonly used to treat conditions like heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's disease.

In 1998, the Clinton administration told state Medicaid officials that they had to pay for medically approved uses of Viagra. Some states balked. Federal officials said then that states could limit the number of pills and prescriptions for the drug. Medicare is financed by the federal government, for the elderly and disabled. States and the federal government share the cost of Medicaid, for low-income people."