Whew! The Medicare Part D (for DRUGS) enrollment period finally ended Monday. The folks from AARP, Humana and hundreds of insurance companies can stop harassing elders and go back to whatever they were selling before this nightmare began.
Our government can recall the hucksters who were pushing this product on seniors at taxpayer expense. Well, who did you think was paying for all those “informational” meetings where befuddled seniors were “helped” into buying yet another private insurance plan? Free prescription drugs for gramps? Not even.
Since the turkey legislation called Medicare Reform was rammed through Congress at a deliberately underestimated cost, the Bush administration has been defending its market-driven smorgasbord of options-with more loopholes than the tax code-as a welcome “choice.”
It’s been a long slog.
Like the famous misjudgment that we would be embraced by the Iraqi people as liberators, the administration predicted our seniors would eagerly line up to make their choice. Instead, seniors were repelled by the plan’s sadistic complexity and the strong-arm tactics used to coerce the unwilling to sign up “before it’s too late.” That’s what healthy Medicare recipients were being told. Sign up now, even though you don’t need it, otherwise it will cost you more when you do become ill. Insurance companies need healthy people on the plan to spread the risk pool.
In the coming weeks we will hear that the plan is a huge success. That millions of seniors now have access to prescription drugs. Not free, but at reduced cost. The numbers, of course, will be tweaked to include millions of people whose prescriptions were already being covered by Medicaid (Medical, in California) or Veterans Affairs. Many of these patients were turned away from pharmacies when the Medicare benefit kicked in last January, along with countless others who had actually signed up but were not on their pharmacist’s list. We will never be told exactly how many patients went without their meds while computer glitches were worked out. State governments had to step in and front the money so old and disabled folks could get their prescriptions filled.
Some HMOs include the prescription drug benefit in their basic health plan, relieving members of the dreaded decision, but in many cases, increasing the co-pay for drugs and limiting the choice to generics.
Bush is now burning up more precious jet fuel, taking his show on the road to promote another scheme to further privatize medicine. Focusing on the young and healthy population, he is pushing his private health savings accounts. Isn’t this just another tax deduction for those wealthy enough to save anything? Surely it has no value for the average family living from paycheck to paycheck, working for hourly wages with no medical or dental benefits. Haven’t the wealthy always had this option?
The real problem is the mish-mash this country calls health care. The onus is on employers, a relic of World War II wage caps that is now a victim of globalization. Once demonized as “socialized medicine,” national (single payer) health care is the norm in Canada and Europe and costs half what we spend per capita with measurably better outcomes.
The other problem is that we are, as a nation and individually, enthralled to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, to which the current administration shamelessly panders. We are bombarded with TV ads for drugs that are often more harmful than the maladies for which they’re prescribed. Not content to pick our pockets for medications needed to control real life-threatening diseases, drug manufacturers are inventing diseases they claim to cure.
Menopause, for instance, is a normal stage of life, not a disease, though your doctor may prescribe hormone replacement therapy, which may increase your risk for heart disease and cancer. Drugs once used only to treat severe clinical depression are being prescribed to cure ordinary discontent, even shyness.
Some drugs are given to prevent conditions that might otherwise be warded off through simple changes of diet or lifestyle. And they all come with a price, not only to insurers, but also to the health of otherwise normal people. Drugs to prevent age-related bone thinning, for instance, can cause serious digestive problems and debilitating muscle or joint pain, for which, of course, you may be prescribed yet another medication.
We have allowed Big Pharma to make us think of ourselves as sick when we are just out of sorts or a little off our game. At the same time, it lobbies to control sales of the cheap, safe remedies people traditionally took for ordinary conditions. Unremitting happiness is not a birthright. Nor is it even desirable. What’s wrong with the occasional mood swing?
We should be taking back responsibility for our own health. Not by tax-deductible health savings accounts to pay for drugs, but by using common sense.
Indigestion? Forget the prescription for “acid-reflux disease.” Just stop washing down the pepperoni pizza with two cups of coffee. Hot flashes? Get a fan. Feeling sad? Forget Prozac. Rent a really funny movie, or watch “The Daily Show on Comedy Central.”
Laughter really is the best medicine. It won’t drive up the national debt and it’s free of side effects.