The Medicare Scam

It sounds confusing as all get-out. Medicare will pay 75%
after $250 has been spent, up to $2,250. After that, there's a
"window" in the coverage that extends all the way to $5,100. Patient
pays 100%. Then Medicare kicks back in, paying 95% of costs over
$5,100. Until the end of the year. Then you get to start over.

It's confusing, and it's meant to be. The Republican
designers of this monster wanted folks on Medicare to be staring
helplessly at their calculators, wondering where to begin. 

It's actually real simple: If you rack up $5,100 in
prescription costs in a calendar year, Medicare will pay only $1,500
of that, leaving you to manage the remaining $3,600. Come the new
year, you start with the same deductibles. Oh, and they want you to
pay $420 a year for the privilege, so each year, on $5,100 worth of
drugs, you shell out a total of $4,020. 

If you only make about $40,000 a year or less, it means you're
screwed. 

In fact, you're screwed anyway. You see, they slipped a
couple of real nasty provisions in there. 

First, the government agrees to end all efforts to regulate
the prices of prescription drugs. No price caps, no regulation. And
why not? After the first $5,100, the taxpayer is footing the bill!
The drug companies will work hard to get you, the taxpayer, to cough
up handsomely for this wonderful gift the Putsch junta has given them!

Well, let's see: we have a new program that pays $1,500 on
the first $5,100 in prescription drug costs. That's really going to
help the fixed-income folks, isn't it? Costs About $425 a year, so in
reality, the oldsters shell out a hair over $4,000 for drugs that cost
$5,100 without any coverage at all.

The "coverage" doesn't start until 2006, a point where voters
who aren't paying attention won't notice what this entails until after
the mid-term elections. 

But over the next six years, the deductibles go up by 78%.
With the result that by 2011, the 95% coverage doesn't kick in until
the $8,500 level, with only about $2,250 of that covered by Medicare,
at an additional cost of $700 a year. 

In other words, once the drug companies get done jacking their
rates (and who's gonna stop them?), you'll pay $700 a year for the
privilege of paying $7,250 for drugs that cost $5100 now. Whadda
deal!

But wait! There's more! As a part of the drug deal Congress
passed, efforts to regulate drug prices are dropped, AND it remains
illegal to get the same drugs at a much lower price from Canada!
Which means the drug companies can continue to strive to produce the
best possible products at the lowest possible price. 

Just like they have for the past ten years.

Oh, we are ROYALLY screwed!

Which means millions of Americans not only get nothing out of
the deal, but they get shafted with a pickax sideways, being forced to
spend thousands for less drugs.

Ain't nothing progressive about that scam, cupcakes! 

The American Association for Retired People, AARP, the biggest
public interest group in America, actually supported this turkey.
Only now, a week after it's too late, have they realized that a large
majority of their membership (63%) feel that the scam the
administration sent through an obliging, paid-for Congress screwed
them, and that the AARP betrayed them. Only now is AARP backtracking
in confusion and disarray from promises to help promote and support
the plan in meetings with its membership.

The poor really get it in the shorts. There are low-income
provisions, but get a load of them, as reported by the pro-Putsch
paper, Newsday: "Premiums, deductibles and coverage gaps will be
waived for people earning less than $12,123 a year. To qualify for the
subsidy, seniors can have no more than $6,000 in assets, other than a
house. The subsidies will be phased out between $12,123 and roughly
$13,500 in yearly income."

Most people have at least $6,000 in furniture, car, and
clothing. And of course, if you make $13,500 a year (a princely sum
indeed, you lucky ducky!) and own a late-model Buick, you don't get
any of it. The same people who whine endlessly about having to pay
20% taxes on an income of one million a year have decided that making
$13,500 means you don't need any help.

Employers might help. One little provision, which will cost
an estimated $70 billion a year, gives the employers a dollar for
dollar tax break on coverage provided for retirees beginning in 2006.
Only of course, it isn't "dollar for dollar" – the employers get to
include "overhead and expenses," with no limits set on that.

Medicare has about 3% administrative overhead, and right
wingers like to whine about that. Now companies will be allowed to
charge as much as they feel like for providing an inferior service.
Lucky us.

Another $12 billion will be provided to insurance companies
willing to do the same thing that Medicare does now at 3% overhead.
The bill allocates $12 billion a year for administrative overhead,
which suggests they expect it to be a bit more than 3%. Again you,
the taxpayer, are paying for this. Lucky ducky.

Resident aliens don't have to worry about the decline in
health care quality brought about by the privatization of coverage, at
least. They don't qualify for Medicare, even though they pay the same
taxes, and in many cases, have paid into the system for years. 

But cheer up. Health and Human Services has refused to
certify Canadian drugs for prescriptions, even though they are the
same goddamn drugs, made by the same goddamn companies, to the same
goddamn standards. However, the administration has promised to
conduct a study into the matter.

At taxpayer expense, of course.

You lucky ducky.



"...too many whites are getting away with drug use."
-- Rush Limbaugh, on his short lived TV show
October 5, 1995