Hello Kossacks!I am back from exile(for now) for the obvious reasons I won't repeat right now, but I'm posting this here, because this is an issue that affects everyone and really has little to do with any candidate. I don't know who still remembers me from those outside the Edwards circle, but I did have a lot of good times here, despite everything. Here is a subject that I should have wrote a diary about a long time ago, though I have referenced it a lot as most of you know; the Medicare Prescription D Plan. Why do I bring it up? Well from the T.V, you can find a lot of commercials on T.V. Sure, they sound nice; the cute little children asking you to support which candidate that will fix health care on one commercial (and blatantly filling the poor little kids’ heads with BS like SS being broken) and spending your heard earned money on hiring Montel Williams to tell you(Though I feel for him, because he has MS, but he, like many in this country, is being misled about this entire issue by the lobby that is paying him for these commercials):
"Don’t worry. America’s Pharmaceutical companies want to help."
I have to admit, that commercial cracks me up every time. But it’s partly true; they want you to help them help you, give your money to them, like the Washington Lobbyist written prescription bill was meant to do in the first place. Why do you think, there’s so much pressure:
Sign up now! You missed the deadline? Shit!! Just go online, pay the penalty, and do it you old fuck!!!
Lol. Ok, that’s part of the priceman hyperbole, but it’s pretty accurate, despite my satirical framing of the words. Sure it may seem as if it’s good for the short run, but what happens when you fall inside a doughnut hole? I know, that sounds tasty and fun, but here’s the doughnut hole I’m talking about:
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
(CBS) Medicare Part D is providing prescription drug coverage to millions of older Americans. But ever since the program went into effect in January, there's been an epidemic of confusion and headaches. As CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports, here comes another one: the "doughnut hole."
For Paul Jutras, who takes 14 medicines every day, the Medicare drug benefit seemed to stop as soon as it began.
"Asticol was $253.30," he says. "They paid nothing. And I paid 253.30."
The problem is that he's fallen into a gap in coverage called the "doughnut hole" — in which seniors pay for all of their drugs themselves. On Jutras' low income, and with this many prescriptions, he's trying to decide which drug not to take.
"I've had congestive heart failure," he says, "so giving up one of those prescriptions can really be fatal for me."
For all patients, Medicare covers 75 percent of the first $2,250 worth of drugs. But after that, coverage drops to zero — and doesn't resume until the patient hits $5,100 in expenses. Then Medicare kicks in again, paying 95 percent of costs. But it's this gap — of almost $3,000 — that many sick and disabled seniors call unaffordable.
To highlight the issue, Democrats held a hearing on whom the coverage gap hurts.
"We feel there is something very wrong with the way Medicare Part D is written," says David Madison, who's taking one very expensive cancer drug. He says he reached the "doughnut hole" in a month.
The total cost of his care, he told us, plus the coverage gap is wiping him out.
"It could eventually lead to bankruptcy," he says. "It is catastrophic."
"What we have is absolutely insane," says Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.. He's among the Democrats who wants to fix the "doughnut hole" by allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs. When the benefit was being debated, Republicans refused that approach — calling it government price-setting.
"You wouldn't have to have that 'doughnut hole,' that gap in coverage, if Medicare were allowed to buy its drugs in bulk and therefore negotiate the price down," he says.
Medicare has two suggestions for seniors hoping to avoid the "doughnut hole": Switch to lower-cost generics if possible and you won't hit the hole so fast. Also, this November, you can also switch plans: Choose one that might be more expensive but offers coverage in the coverage gap.
The "doughnut hole" is also emerging as a powerful election issue because of when seniors will feel the pain: Somewhere between 3 million and 7 million seniors will fall into this coverage gap between now and November.
Of course this is even when the plan was first implemented, so this was part of the overall plan, within the initial plan to begin with; here’s a video from sarahlane’s wonderful blog about Nick Colombo’s awesome victory against PacifiCare with the help of activists like all of you, of John Edwards confirming what I just said and have repeated to no avail:
I have butted heads with many other candidates’ supporters who just don’t seem to think this issue is important or they deny the relevance; if you see anyone touting this program in any fashion, that is reason for concern, case and point: the AARP.
Now I know the AARP does a lot of good, but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of reasons to be suspicious of them. For one, relying on "the market" and "competition" is not going to do a damn thing to bring down premiums or drug prices, like it has not in the recent past:
http://www.familiesusa.org/...
A key claim made by those who wanted a privatized Medicare Part D
drug program—especially one that prohibits Medicare from bargaining
for cheaper prices—is that competition among private plans would slow the
increase in drug prices. Plans would supposedly use their market power to negotiate
lower drug prices and pass those savings on to beneficiaries and taxpayers in the
form of lower drug prices and premiums.
The bold says it all and you would think the AARP would be looking out for us here, but as shown by their actions, they are beholden to the same think tanks that want to privatize SS and privatize Medicare, which is why this plan is a disaster in the first place. I don’t know when the hell the market wizards are going to wake up and realize that privatizing Medicare is an oxymoron and it never should have been done in the first place, because market solutions appeal to only those with sufficient income to buy into it and Medicare has no place being bought or sold on the market. Why do we hear that, "It’s working!" when the prices of prescription drugs or premiums have not significantly been decreased or even adjusted for inflation in any sense of the term:
More than a year after the Part D benefit began, however, the evidence shows that
private plans have done little to slow the inexorable rise in drug prices. Rather, over
the past year, Part D drug prices have increased several times faster than the rate of
inflation. Families USA analyzed the prices for 15 of the drugs most frequently
prescribed to seniors.1 We examined prices for each of the plans offered by the
largest Part D insurers, which together cover about two-thirds of all Part D beneficiaries.2
We then compared the lowest available Part D price for each drug in April 2006 with
the lowest available price for the same drug in April 2007.
The lowest price for every one of the top 15 drugs prescribed to seniors increased,
and the median increase was 9.2 percent (see table on page 2).
I know you have also seen the AARP commercial touting this plan, "IT’S WORKING!" Some Republicans may look at my references as being outdated, even though this is a year ago, but if this plan is really "working" then why did I get this anonymous email (I’m not even a member):
Dear Price,
As you read this, we have a small window of opportunity to pressure Congress to stop skyrocketing Medicare costs from going even higher. Did you know that:
· Monthly premiums for Medicare beneficiaries have more than doubled since 2000 and
· Out-of-pocket expenses on hospital visits alone cost beneficiaries $1,000 each?
Really? I thought it was "WORKING!!! The premiums were designed to go up and for seniors to fall into this doughnut hole, which is why lobbyists wrote it in the first place. Why would they write legislation and pay for it, if it didn’t affect them in a great way? Basically this is an admission that this whole plan as a failure, while trying to tout it and get supposed fixes on a failure of a system as designed. Albeit cleverly, to make it seem as if this plan is working starting out by touting the success stories you see and the failures you don’t hear about; it was never meant to give everyone affordable prescription drugs. We had a chance for affordable prescription drugs in 2004, but Bush and the Republicans in Congress defeated it, because, "we want to make sure the drugs are safe from Al Qaeda. Yeah, even though the medicine to teat all those Anthrax cases came from Canada.
Last December, when more than 100,000 people got involved in AARP’s campaign to strengthen Medicare, the Senate only passed a temporary fix, set to expire THIS June.
Today, as Congress is deciding what to do once the temporary fix expires, we need to collect 200,000 signatures on our petition to Keep Medicare Fair – will you help?
Click here to sign the KeepMedicareFair.org petition and help me meet our 200,000 signature goal.
Your support has never been more important. If Congress does not do the right thing, older Americans will be forced to pay even higher premiums on top of their already skyrocketing out-of-pocket health care costs.
Yeah...Congress didn’t do the right thing, because this bill passed, but hopelessly amending a market solution like this letter admits already happened, will do nothing.
Time is running out, and we cannot let our Members of Congress stand by while Medicare premiums continue to rise. We need to keep Medicare’s premiums fair.
Help us double our impact and sign the KeepMedicareFair.org petition today!
Here’s a stupid question; why are we putting "premiums" with "Medicare" in the first place? When were there fair Medicare premiums? The fact that we are using them in the same sentence doesn’t seem fair to me.
Once you take action, you can really help us reach our goal of 200,000 petitions by forwarding this email to your friends and family. We need to make sure that all Members of Congress hear from us – and not just the special interests and their lobbyists.
Thank you for your support!
Sincerely,
The AARP Online Advocacy Team
Needless to say, I didn’t take action, UNLESS you scrap this whole piece of shit program and don’t rob seniors of money better spent living life and supporting their children and not having to travel to other countries just to get less expensive drugs(a major cause of bankruptcy in this country). I think that’s pretty funny, though; they’ll hear from you this time and not JUST the special interests...who wrote this plan....that’s working....but we need you to support our efforts, because its’ actually not working.
No we do not need a market solution to this crisis, because no other industrialized country spends as much as we do on health care with so little result. Notice they don’t give any examples of any success in privatizing Medicare or any government run program with success. That’s why Medicare is having the problems it is having, because privatization goes against the fundamentals of Medicare. We need Medicare for all via single payer and stop with the privatization scams and that’s what everyone really needs to contact Congress about. this will only get worse with this lobbyist written legislation.
Anyway, thanks for reading.