The NYT reports that a quarter of Mississippi's population is on Medicaid.
That's staggering enough.
But now, the loveable Haley Barbour (remember him?) is trying to cut the number of pills the sick and elderly are allowed.
He and his creepy pals have succeeded.
Look at this:
(entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/02/national/02medicaid.html)
When are the states going to have the right to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma?
When hell freezes? Or Haley Barbour's hedge fund investments go bottom up, and he needs Medicaid too?
Starting Friday, most Medicaid recipients in Mississippi will be limited to five prescription drugs at a time, with no process for appeal.
<snip>
It will hit hard for people like Erainna Johnson, 42, left legally blind by a stroke in 1997. She takes 19 medications - already more than the previous Medicaid limit of seven - relying on family members, her church and free samples from doctors to make up the difference. "Sometimes I just crack my pills in half, honestly," she said, sitting in the living room of her trailer here.
<snip>
In Mississippi, where more than a quarter of the population is on Medicaid, the cap includes a limit of two name-brand drugs. The only patients exempt from the rule are children, people in nursing homes and patients with H.I.V., who were given an 11th-hour reprieve because virtually none of the anti-viral drugs used were available in generic form.
Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican who backed steeper cuts to Medicaid than those enacted, said the Legislature had come up with the limit on prescription drugs on its own. But, he added, "states are limited in their options as far as cost control."
The cost of Medicaid, financed jointly by the federal government and the states, has risen 63 percent in five years and is now more than $300 billion a year. Governors from both parties have asked the federal government to allow them more latitude in restricting Medicaid spending.
Advocates for the ill and the disabled in Mississippi say many patients require more medicine than the new restrictions allow. Others who could be affected include diabetics, the mentally ill and cancer patients. Of the 768,000 Medicaid patients in 2004, 80,000 used more than five prescriptions a month.