(GOP)Congress Strikes a Tentative Deal on Drug Benefits (10k assets=rich)

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/politics/23MEDI.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

Congress Strikes a Tentative Deal on Drug Benefits
By ROBERT PEAR


ASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — House and Senate negotiators said on Wednesday that they had agreed on the structure of prescription drug benefits to be offered to 40 million elderly and disabled people in the biggest expansion of Medicare to date.<snip>

..pay premiums averaging $35/m...w/ a $275 drug deductible coverage.
..pay 25 percent of drug costs from $275 to $2,200 a year.
..then pay nothing until ...a total of $3,600 out of pocket.
..After spending $3,600, the beneficiary would pay 5 percent of the cost of each prescription — or a nominal co-payment, perhaps $5 or $10 for each prescription.

House Republicans insist on keeping the provision of their bill that calls for price competition between private plans and traditional Medicare in 2010. Such competition, called "premium support," would save money in the long run, they say, and it is essential to winning the votes of conservatives.

But Senator Conrad said: "Premium support, in the form being pushed by the House, would kill this legislation in the Senate. The competition model just doesn't work in my part of the country."
<snip>

[Don_G]

1. I Don't Know If That's Going To Pass

My Mom (when she was alive) wouldn't have been elgible with the "strict assets" test. She had a house, but lived on SS and the taxes, insurance, utilities and food took such a big bite that she couldn't afford her blood pressure medication which ultimately killed her.

The bill will help quite a few people, but not nearly enough people in the middle class.

[Malva Zebrina]

2. Kudos to Snowe

But talk is cheap in Washington.


"It's important that the focus remain on providing generous prescription drug coverage to low-income seniors," Mr. Bingaman said. "I am concerned that that's not going to emerge from the conference committee."
<snip>
The government would eliminate the premium and the deductible for an individual below 135 percent of the poverty level — income less than $12,123 a year. The beneficiary would have to pay a $2 co-payment for each generic drug and $5 for each brand-name drug until the overall cost of the person's prescriptions reached $5,000. Medicare would cover all costs beyond that.
<snip>
"But a strict assets test could disqualify people with assets over $10,000. They would not receive "low-income subsidies," even if they had very low incomes.

</snip>


I am not sure what this means--after living all of their lives or a good part of their lives in their home, modest as it may be, people who qualify as under the $12,123, will have to take 3,600 of that to pay for a prescription medication, which soorner or later is most likely to get em--what will be left to pay for food, heating, clothing , other doctor bills,taxes and repairs on an old house and such? Scary

A friend of mine who is a Canadian, says that although cost of living is higher, people are not expected to sell their homes in order to pay necessary health costs.


In this illustration, the Nazis demonstrated that the daily cost to the state of maintaining one chronically ill person (5.5 marks) could be better spent supporting an entire healthy German family.

[papau]

3. But GOP now defined GOP classwarfare as over 10k in assets against "poor"

Seems like there are a lot of "rich" who are not in top FIT bracket, nor do they have an estate tax problem.

But "we" all line up with the rich and push for more tax cuts for the rich, don't we, because we are not the poor based on the new Welfare program called Medicare and its MEANS TEST.