Gouging Grandma

[marmar]

from Truthdig:


Gouging Grandma


Posted on Oct 17, 2007
By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—With all the waste, fraud and abuse to be uncovered in government, it’s hard to get excited about exposing the first, relatively innocuous member of this unholy trio. But then, you have to recall that a big point of creating the Medicare drug benefit as it was crafted by the Republican Congress in 2003 was to build in enough waste to pay off the insurance companies and drug manufacturers for their years of loyal campaign contributions.

That’s why elderly people, who are used to getting insurance directly from Medicare, were forced to buy their drug coverage from private insurers and to navigate a sea of competing marketing claims and coverage options to get their prescriptions.

And it’s why Henry Waxman—who is busy enough plumbing the unfathomable depths of malfeasance in Iraq—is right to get beyond the government’s own account of how well the Medicare drug plans are working and probe just how much more that elderly beneficiaries and taxpayers are forking over because lawmakers refused to let Medicare patients buy their prescriptions directly from Medicare.

No question the drug program has met its basic goal: Millions of elderly people who previously had no insurance coverage for their prescriptions now are covered. But at what price?

Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Waxman chairs, tallied administrative and marketing costs—as well as profits—of private Medicare drug plans and found them to be six times higher than the administrative costs of the broader Medicare program, which covers hospital and outpatient care. If insurance-industry middlemen were cut out and if the administration of the drug benefit were turned over to Medicare, Waxman’s committee calculates the savings would amount to $3.9 billion this year.

But that’s only one form of gouging embedded in the drug program. Private insurers also have failed to obtain the deep discounts on drugs that are achieved by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicaid and even Pennsylvania’s state program for helping the elderly with prescriptions. By law, pharmaceutical companies must offer Medicaid drugs at the lowest price that manufacturers offer any customer; the VA demands prices below wholesale. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071018_gouging_grandma/

[monmouth]

1. SS benefits will be 2.3% increase for '08, the lowest in years...n/t

[kickysnana]

2. Donut hole + low income seniors = no drugs Oct -Dec

If grandma or uncle harry seems to spend a lot of time at the ER or Urgent care at the end of the year perhaps you should inquire if they are still able to afford to get their meds. There are no programs to help the people who cannot. You don't pay you don't get meds and many seniors live hand to mouth.

They know that these plans themselves are set to go up an average of 21% and the cost of living adjustment is 2.1% and we conclude are statistitions and politicians is not learning and/or hate old people.