LAT: (California) Medicare Situation Still Chaotic

[DeepModem Mom]

Medicare Situation Still Chaotic
With some drugstores unaware of emergency state measures to cover medication costs, many patients are turned away for lack of money.

By Valerie Reitman and Daniel Hernandez, Times Staff Writers


With only one kidney, Francisco Villaseñor depends on dialysis and a special drug to cleanse impurities from his body.

But on Friday, he left the Rite Aid pharmacy in Los Feliz without the drug. He didn't have $179 the drugstore demanded.

"How can I pay? I don't have money," said Villaseñor, 47, lifting his sagging polo shirt to show the L-shaped scar where surgeons removed his left kidney five years ago when his organs began to fail.

Until two weeks ago, he got his medication for free. Then the federal government automatically switched about 6 million elderly and disabled Americans such as him — 1 million just in California — into the new Medicare prescription drug program, and the glitches began.

Since Jan. 1, countless low-income Medicare patients have been turned away from druggists' counters or forced to come up with large sums of cash for crucial drugs....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-medicare14jan14,0,6081060.story?coll=la-home-local

[kurth]

1. Another clusterfuck - courtesy of the Bush government

[salin]

2. This is a crisis

but the GOP congress who created the mess are too busy playing the delay game (first don't comeback to DC until end of January to let DeLay try to get out of his indictment, then play the delay game to see who will replace leadership - and still give delay power (note his move to get a spot on the appropriations (doling out the $) committee) to be bothered to try to hammer out a fix for the poor, elderly and disabled whose lives are at real risk due to the GOP congress's folly.

[zanne]

3. It's almost like needing a fix sometimes.

I'm a low-income person who is disabled. Sometimes, coming up with the cash for a prescription makes me feel like I might as well be an addict looking for cash to buy a fix. Of course, that's illegal, but I, on the other hand, as well within my legal rights to be sick and unable to get the remedy. I wonder how many deaths there have been so far; I'm sure there have been a few.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Thanks for sharing this expression of your personal experience, zanne --

how awful that you have come to feel this way. I wish we could do better in this country, and pray tht someday we will.

:grouphug:

[salin]

5. outrage... real outrage

:cry: :mad:

[caligirl]

6. It stinks so bad , how will repugs ever retain power? painful and wrong

but they are in power and when their lack of care and concern for average citizens is felt wide and far enough we can look forward to another 40 year period in power. It will be needed to fix the damage they have done. The voters have to feel the pain before they care enough to scream for change. Sad.

[sandnsea]

7. But is it on the teevee

I suspect we'll have to see people dropping in the streets, live, before it even begins to sink into the American psyche. There is absolutely no excuse for this, this was one of the key reasons Democrats voted for this bill. The disabled and elderly SHOULD get their health care from Medicare and not have to go through the paperwork and economic difficulties of qualifying for Medicaid. In the long run, alot of people will actually be helped by this step. But there has been more than enough time for a smooth transition and we need to find out what Brownie was in charge of this clusterfuck.