More on the Medicare Part D Catastrophe
I hope BriVT is right about this - that this new Medicare debacle will affect so many millions of ordinary Americans that it will be impossible to ignore. This is truly a far-reaching crisis with staggering implications for our healthcare “system”. From a column in Newsday:
But Gottlich doubts this Congress or President George W. Bush will deal with the fundamental reason for these problems. As correspondent Margaret Warner said recently on PBS’ “NewsHour,” “There’s no standard government-designed plan” administered by Medicare. “Instead, enrollees have to choose from dozens of plans offered by private insurance, with different deductibles, co-pays and lists of authorized drugs.”
Some Democrats want to modify the privatization aspects of the law by having at least one standard plan run by Medicare. But that would mean competition for private companies from the more efficient Medicare system, which could use its purchasing power to drive prices down. The Republicans and the drug companies who bought them won’t hear of it.
Did anyone *really* think that Part D was going to improve anything? The congresscritters who voted for this piece of garbage must have just closed their eyes, gritted their teeth, put cotton in their ears, and mumbled to themselves, “well, it’s all for the sake of privatization and competition, which are theoretically good things…”
Despite whatever “big picture” rationale they made up to make themselves feel better, our legislators knew in their hearts that they were screwing the real, live, human individuals who depend on the government to get the medication they need. And they will hear about it. They won’t listen to young and healthy me, but they will be forced to listen to the millions of grandmas and grandpas whose lives are now in jeopardy, and the angry state officials who are emptying their coffers in order to keep the government’s pledge to the elderly poor.