Enough participants have fallen into the doughnut hole of Medicare’s Part D drug plan that members of Congress should hear plenty from older constituents as they begin their two-week break starting today. Rather than offering bland condolences, senators and House members can support three commonsense changes to the program.

First, the punitive cut-off date of May 15 for signing up this for this year is clearly too short a time for seniors and the many groups trying to help them figure out which of the many plans being offered is best. It is understandable that insurers would want some certainty about the number of beneficiaries, but the May date was set with the expectation that all would go smoothly when the program opened in January. Clearly, it didn’t.

Second, some seniors and their families have already discovered the old prices of their drugs have doubled or even tripled under the new plan. Either insurers have not negotiated as well as, for instance, some Medicaid programs or seniors had better access to discounted drugs before, but under Part D they quickly are being pushed into the doughnut hole. That’s the range where they must pay for drugs entirely out of their own pockets until they have paid $3,600 our of their own pockets (not counting the plan’s contributions) before being covered again under Part D.

The ability of the government to negotiate the best prices for seniors, both to slow the number who reach the doughnut hole and to reduce prices within it, is crucial. Sen. Olympia Snowe and Rep. Tom Allen have been urging their colleagues to back plans that would hit both these points, and though Congress has a habit of waiting until the last possible day to pass anything, seniors shouldn’t be rushed into choosing a plan before May 15 that isn’t right for them (that’s already happened too often) and they should be able to obtain drugs for prices at least as low as what they were paying before Part D.

Rep. Allen would go even further with a third, much-needed change: He would instruct the federal government to establish a competing drug plan under the traditional structure of Medicare. Though it would have to be controlled for adverse selection (in which lots of sick people join the most generous plan, drive up the cost and drive out the relatively healthy), such a plan would bring more competition to the private coverage and likely prove popular with many seniors who value low cost and reliability.

Part D has lots of other problems – lack of assurance that the drugs a senior needs will remain on a plan’s formulary, the absence in many states of wrap-around coverage for the poor, an undue burden on pharmacists, who are often the ones left to sort out miscommunications between insurer and beneficiary. But the three changes above would begin to unwind some of the more pressing problems that have arisen in Part D’s short life and make it easier when seniors are forced to revisit this for next year.