http://www.smartmoney.com/thenewretirement/index.cfm?story=september2007
The New Retirement
Don’t Believe the Hype on Medicare Part D
By Peter Keating |Peter Keating Archive |Published: September 10, 2007
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Try this on for size instead. Under Medicare’s drug benefit, you pay $4,270 of the first $5,871 in prescription costs you incur.
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Part D has serious problems beyond the doughnut hole. For one thing, it requires insurers to offer just one drug per therapeutic class, which means no plan may cover all of the specific blood pressure or anti-inflammatory drugs your doctor wants to prescribe. For another, Medicaid, state insurance programs and private employers are all dumping beneficiaries into Part D. That may save those plans money, but it costs seniors. In the first half of 2006, for example, low-income retirees and their insurers paid an extra $325 million to Pfizer because they lost discounts in switching from Medicaid to Part D. Most important, after a quiet period following the prescription benefit’s enactment, insurance companies got busy hiking prices: 78% of Part D insurers increased the price of their most popular drugs at least three times last year, according to a Consumers Union study of 225 plans in the five biggest states. About a quarter of them pushed prices up by 5% or more in just the first two months of this year.
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You really didn’t think that this was anything but WELFARE for the drug companies?
Why DO you think they make all those big campaign contributions to both political parties? It not out of principle but out of greed.
Argh!
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Reinke Faces Life 