How fricking difficult can it be to setup a medicare prescription program

My parents are absolutely baffled by all this stuff and even with my college degree education, I have to admit I am too.

Why couldn't our government pass a simple plan that issues one card to every senior that covers so much for for doctors & so much for prescriptions. You could pick a tiered plan that would include coverage for everything, coverage for prescriptions only or an option to "opt-out" all together. Three simple choices that would be given to every senior out there.

These people are suppose to be enjoying retirement and instead they sit reading over all this crap of over 400 available programs, scratching their fricking heads and then calling me and asking if I can figure any of this out.

What kind of dumbasses put a program together like this?

thats where !

It's not easy to pay everybody off.

The real goal, of course, was to make it as obscure and inefficient as possible so that the pharmcos and insurers could rake in the take.

Starve the Beast: the goal is to get people WANTING to abandon government in favor of corporations...

http://www.wordspy.com/words/starvethebeast.asp

excerpt:
you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government.

I'm convinced that they designed the medicare prescription program this way.

They want seniors to be baffled into giving up and not receiving any of their benefits.

I've witnessed this ploy first hand with the FEMA post-Katrina benefits. A friend of mine is helping out a Katrina family. The Katrina victim couldn't figure out the forms. They were a convoluted, impossible mess. The family looked them over and was just as baffled. So, they gave the forms to their family CPA. It took him two solid days just to get through the forms. He had to call FEMA more than 10 times to ask questions and get clarifications.

If a seasoned CPA has a hard time with the forms---how many poor people or uneducated people will get through these forms? Not many. MOst will give up.

As I said, I'm convinced this is part of the strategy. It has to be.

I'm sorry for what your parents are going through. It should not be like this. I hope that they can figure it out!

people will spend so much time finding the "right" plan that they won't have time for the small print...

Once you're locked into a plan.. they are allowed to change the medication they cover... but you can't just go shopping for a new plan to accommodate their changes..

Dumbasses who are beholden to big pharma, that's who. Profits Galore!! :woohoo:

private plans that could cost them $250 a month. How is taking $250 dollars out of their checks help them? Leave it to repiglicans to not understand that the senors and others can't afford to lose any more of their SS checks.

The Rx drug program is a gift to the pharmaceutical industry. A provision of the law makes it illegal to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers. The drug program is so complex, because it was written by the drug companies with a primary goal of continuing to increase profits at the government's expense - it is basically a government subsidy for drug manufacturers. The program will be an incredible financial burden to the government, with only token savings for the public.

...those who are eligible for both Medicare AND Medicaid. They are going to be worse off than they are now.

Please don't ask me to explain in detail because I barely understand the mechanics myself, but some of our clients living on about $650 a month are going to start having to pay drug co-pays which they are not paying now. Ten prescriptions at $3 each add up to $30 a month - and we have people on far more than 10 drugs.

We have already had people telling us that if it's a choice between food, heat, or medication, they'll have to go without the medication.

I am convinced that some people are going to die as a result of this program.

This mis-named "benefit" should have people people pounding down their Reps doors demanding that it be scrapped.

My only faint hope is that as it's implemented the support for National Health Care will grow, as people see what a scam and a sham it is.

If you actually wanted prescription drug coverage, it would be easy.

But that wasn't the goal here. The goal was to preserve the profit
margins of the insurance companies and drug companies.

And that goal was probably met.

Tesha

Hom incompetent is it to design a system that works in your favor?

... here in MA, Raytheon announced that it would save $170 million in drug costs for their employees by shifting them to Medicare Plan D.

Pretty clever, eh? Now the taxpayer picks up the bill for Raytheon.

the corporations that it impacts, specifically the HMOs and the pharmaceutical industry . . . the proof is all of the effort that they're putting into signing people up for their plans . . . you can be damned sure this wouldn't be the case unless they expected to reap windfall profits from the whole scheme . . .

Medicare Part D is NOT for healthcare "consumers" (we used to call them patients). . . it's for the corporations that sell the plans and the drugs . . . period . . .