Ever, Increasingly Popular Medicare Prescription Drug Plan

[otohara]

That's how NBC news described the RX plan. I thought people were paying more and not liking it so much. Less drugs being covered.

Yes, no????

[Lefty48197]

1. Increasingly popular?

Now what I've heard either...

[Warpy]

3. Yeah, on what planet?

My pop had a stack of papers 2 inches thick describing the various plans he was supposed to be conned into signing up for. He said the prices of all his meds had started to skyrocket.

A lot of things conspired to kill him and I think the idiocy of this industry designed "benefit" is one of them. He told me he was tired and it all seemed like too much trouble to bother with any more and he wanted to go. And he went.

I know he was very angry over the whole thing and blamed both parties for it.

[Sal Minella]

14. Old people and sick people are the raw ore that Big Pharma mines

for gold. We are not humans to them. We are to be wrung dry of what we can yield to them and be slung onto the slag heap. I'm sorry your Dad felt that way but I don't know any other way to feel.

[caledesi]

2. Just refilled my prescription today! 3 months supply requisite

and it cost $27.00/bottle as opposed to $40.00/bottle (full price). BFD! (and it took 1/2 hour for the pharmacy to figure the whole thing out.....it's a mess)

I chose the Humana plan...am on Medicare.

edit: usual stuff

[Gloria]

22. I may land with that one, too. "Increasingly popular" means people

like me are dragging themselves to join up under the threat of a 1% penalty for every month you refuse.....that means a 12% increase in premiums every year you don't sign up!! This is coercion! It makes me gag to think I may have to do this, sign up for something that the Republicans did!

I'm just looking at the yearly premiums and the deductibles and what they total. From that point on, it seems that many of the drug prices and formularies are pretty similar....Some of the higher monthly premium plans without a deductible actually total LESS than those with a lower monthly preumium plus a deductible combined. Once you figure that out, I think it's a matter of checking which drugs are in the forumlary that you need and what they cost...That's the only sane way I can figure to approach this...l

[bluestateguy]

4. That's not how they described it

What they did say was that the Republicans seem to think it was a success story. I could try to convince the Republicans that they are wrong, but why should I stop the other side from deluding themselves?

[AX10]

5. O.K. That makes more sense. Most media has trashed the damn plan...

for the horrible failure that it is.

[otohara]

21. Very Last Line, Word for Word - Listen For Yourself

it was Kevin Corke - and that is exactly what he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/

Then apologize!

[SoCalDem]

6. "Increasingly popular" only because ALL medicare participants

HAVE to choose a plan or risk paying huge premiums later on. Lots are choosing the bare-bones plans NOW and trying desperatly to cling to hope they won't NEED a more comprehensive one later..and since you CANNOT have private AND the medicare plan, look for more and more retirement medical plans to S T O P as soon as they can possibly do it. Companies who have been providing retirement medical, for people who EARNED them by taking LESS in wages while they worked, will lave their retirees out in the cold, scrambling for these bogus plans.

It's downright CRIMINAL the way they set this thing up. To ballyhoo it as a great benefit for older people is a scam. There ARE some who will get great coverage...but they had it BEFORE, so there is little change for them..

The vast "middle" will face the donut hole fiasco because it was set up that way.. Wealthy people probably chose a plan, but if there's a lot of paperwork, they probably just pay whatever the meds cost, and don;t blink an eye.. the very poor still get total coverage, so it's the mushy middlers who take it in the shorts again..

[Buck Laser]

9. Medicare participants don't HAVE to use Part D...yet.

My former employer (State of IL) provides a prescription insurance program that's considerably better than any of the Medicare prescription programs. So far, at least, having that insurance keeps me from having to sign on for the MUCH more expensive Part D coverage. I do expect to be screwed by the gummint eventually--either IL or the US, your choice. As a three time cancer survivor and veteran of heart surgery, I expect to be bankrupted by the Part D coverage. Of course, the insurance companies will love it.

[SoCalDem]

12. All that has to happen, is for your coverage to "change"

and NOT be better.. It would be too obvious if this happened to all plans suddenly, but rest assured, your plan administrators are busily crunching the numbers, and as soon as feasibly possible, you will probably get a letter informing you that your plan's changes no longer qualify you from exemption.
Fingers crossed for you in hopes it does not happen, but....

[Buck Laser]

20. I never underestimate...

the power of people (as governments or as businesses) to screw up whatever they touch. When the medicare prescription bill passed about three years ago, I started preparing to be screwed again. My first thought at the time was that Americans had been sold out to the highest bidder once again.

Medicare, like Social Security, is something the financial speculators (read:thieves) would just LOVE to get their hands on. Problem is, they won't stop, not even if we get a liberal democratic administration and congress in place. There is just too much money to be made off of old people.

[newswolf56]

11. Not true (and with all due respect, this is typical bourgeois bigotry):

the very poor still get total coverage, so it's the mushy middlers who take it in the shorts again..

The awful realities are far too complex to explain in a single sentence or even a single paragraph, but Part D -- which should properly be called the Demopublican Medicare Drug Lord Benefit -- is savaging the poor as we have never been savaged: chiefly by the denial of lifesaving drugs. If you really want to be informed about this -- rather than play the bourgeois envy-game of hatefully trashing poor people -- here's a starter link:

http://www.medicarerights.org/

and here's another:

http://www.nsclc.org/news/06/01/cmsletter_011206.pdf

As to the prescription drug program's Demopublican nature, here's the Senate vote that rammed it down our throats:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00262

Some of the class-traitors later voted against it, but the subsequent vote didn't matter: the damage was already done.

By the way, among those most harshly victimized by the Prescription Drug Lord Benefit are AIDS patients, denied life-saving drugs that in many instances they were formerly receiving free of charge. And the plan's critics -- mostly advocates for the elderly and disabled who were ignored, shouted down and in some instances intimidated to silence by the program's supporters -- were predicting these horrors from the very beginning. Hence to denounce the program as "genocidal" is in fact an accurate condemnation.

(I know these things because -- an impoverished elderly person myself -- I write about Part D and other such matters for an advocacy-and-information journal that serves elderly and disabled people. The Part D program, which is mandatory -- you are fined severely if you don't sign up by May 15 -- will more than TRIPLE my present-day prescription drug expenses, from about $250 per year to about $825: a staggering blow on a fixed gross income of less than $15,000 per year -- an income that though tiny is still way too much to comply with the upper limit of any subsidy program: programs the Bush bureaucracy, by the way, has obstructed so effectively they are rendered nonfunctional.
Which is yet another horror story.)

_________
Edit: typos and clarity.

[SoCalDem]

13. My friend's brother who is on MediCal had no increase in what it costs him

and the UC system out here televised several indepth seminars on the coverage. That was what I based my comments on.

It may be that California is picking up the difference for the poorer people here.. I am sorry you are one of the ones haviong difficulties with this.:cry:

I have 9 years to go,and hope they can get a REAL plan going by then..

What has always irritated me is that for DECADES I have taken NOTHING, and had excellent benefits, but sure as the sun comes up, when I DO need medicine, I will probably have NO insurance or lousy insurance.. Talk about Karma :(

[newswolf56]

16. California was the very first state (or one of the first) to tap...

its own resources to solve some of the worst problems facing low-income people. If I remember correctly, California's response was largely due to a huge outcry by Barbara Boxer (and again if memory serves me, it was over Schwarznazi's objection and maybe even veto), but as of last month, at least 38 other states had followed suit. Nevertheless the aid-ceilings are so exclusively low that people like myself are devastated just as my own circumstances illustrate: my own tiny annual income slashed by nearly a full month's pension. (I don't have the latest state-by-state tally at my mental fingertips because I haven't written this month's Medicare analysis yet, something I will do next week.)

[SoCalDem]

18. The patchwork of "state fixes" makes it hard for people to

move too..

Leave it to our congress to take a "should-be-simple" idea and turn it into a big mess..

All they needed to do was to turn every Medicare/Medicaid participant into part of a HUGE "group" and let them bargain like union plans do..

But of course, since the prescription drug cartel WROTE the thing, is it any surprise that it's the mess it is?

If dems get control back, this issue needs to be tackled FIRST.. people's lives are at stake.:(

[newswolf56]

19. I don't look for any change even if the Democrats do take back...

Congress. Too many Demos (like my own Sens. Murray and Cantwell) on the prescription drug lords' payroll: note their vote for this program in '03 (linked above) and the fact it made their their subsequent votes against it a meaningless gesture of deceit. Also, the Democrats could have joined with dissident Republicans earlier this year to force reform on the measure but chose not to do so -- further reason I expect there to be no difference at all on this issue should Congress change hands.

[depakid]

7. That's what you get for watching TV "news"

Misinformed.

Part D is an utter debacle.

[windy252]

8. That's not the impression I've been getting.

I'm fairly isolated and my understanding is most people were pretty furious about the Medicare debacle.

[unblock]

10. well see, nobody was on it 5 years ago, so it's more popular today...

:evilgrin:

[datadiva]

15. I hate it

My husbands meds now cost me more thanks to these jerks and their wonderful program. I am also paying 30% more for my own. They effectively took away any oversight into the costs they can charge so now I imagine most people will be paying more and the big pharms will be hauing in the dough for there CEO's. Greedy M*** F***ers! :mad:

Edited for spelling

[Gloria]

23. My favorite part of this is that if you pay for drugs that aren't

in "the plan", the cost doesn't apply to their deductible!!!!

All in all, this crap is costing me more that I'm paying without it....but, the coercion factor and the unknown needs of the future push you into it...

[Cleita]

17. You are right and they are wrong.

I didn't even sign up. The whole program was written by drug company lobbyists for their benefit at the expense of Seniors. I think it's disgusting.