The sentiment won’t comfort area senior citizens struggling to make sense of the Medicare drug benefit options and get through the enrollment process, beginning today, but the program was a well-meant, overdue response to the need to help elderly Americans pay for their prescriptions. With medications having become so essential to health care in the four decades since Medicare’s creation, the government had to update Medicare accordingly. It’s just too bad that leaders didn’t give more thought to keeping the program simple and understandable — or to the political implications of failing to do so.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- BlueJay on Let immigrants run
- Monkeyhawk on Let immigrants run
- Chrisfrommactown on Let immigrants run
- BlueJay on Let immigrants run
- Monkeyhawk on Too many exemptions
- JWink on Too many exemptions
- LonnythePlumber on Jail consultants straining patience
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
6 Comments
Just goes to show how out of touch the Medicare folks are with the average recipient. Maybe they made it confusing in the hopes that a lot of the elderly will just ignore the whole process and the government will save money not having to pay out anything for their meds. Insurance companies play this all the time and it works pretty well for them.
Congress could have made this so much simpler if they had just done the right thing-give Medicare recipients the same healthcare plan that they have given themselves at taxpayer expense. All the current system does is create more red tape and give pharmacutical companies a higher profit margin than oil companies. I hope everyone remembers this in November ‘06. Anyone who votes for incumbents isn’t paying attention.
Damoon,
Absolutely. The GOP’s goal was to cut costs by decreasing Medicare participation, and to let seniors fend for themselves.
This kind of expedient thinking doesn’t take long to backfire. I think this will be a BIG issue in the 2006 Midterm and the 2008 Presidential elections. Seniors are not happy with this plan; not one bit.
And who votes like nobody’s business . . . seniors.
It’s gonna be hard to scare them with Al Qaeda this time around.
As a drug-gulping senior, I still didn’t want Bush pandering to the Democrats to give me free pills. Obviously it wasn’t enough for them anyway. Socialists demand free health care for all.My pills cost a bundle so I bought my own drug coverage. $250/month limits each Rx to $60 or less and is much cheaper than retail pills. If I signed up for the Medicare part D I would lose money. At 66 I can still work as long as I can stay vertical. Others I know have worse problems.Mother-in-law, for example, can no longer work at 80. With part D she can expect to pay $4000 of her &15000 SS for her pills. The high cost ones have been furnished, most generously, by several of the drug companies in the past. She HOPES that will continue. Otherwise she is stuck in her son-in-law’s’ basement. (ME)A friends’ father is 90 and another pill popper. As of 1-1-2006 his drug coverage policy is gone – canceled. After 25 years it didn’t cover very well but kept it down to $200 or so a month. Part D ain’t that good.I don’t know any others but there must be some out there that had nothing before and will have 25% off their pills for $50 a month – some help, but not much till you get really sick.That’s what you get for trying lean to the left Mr. Bush.
Joe C, have you tried Canada drugs? I get my mom’s meds through them and save more than 50% of what we’d pay if we bought them here. I haven’t had the time to look over the Medicare plans, but I’m not sure any of them can do better than that. They’ll give you a quote over the phone.