LAT: Medicare Drug Plan Leaves Out Supplies (to administer medications)

[DeepModem Mom]

The wingnuts in charge are simply incapable of governance -- when will this be ACKNOWLEDGED, and accepted as the truth, not only by the people but by TV "news"???


Medicare Drug Plan Leaves Out Supplies
The benefit covers home IV medication but not the implements and care needed to administer it.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The new Medicare drug program is denying supplies that seriously ill patients need to administer intravenous antibiotics and other medications at home. As a result, some patients are being referred to nursing homes, and others have had to go into hospitals.

Although no national estimates are available, the number of patients affected — including some with life-threatening diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis — could run into the thousands. One Anaheim pharmacy says 200 of its patients are having trouble.

Medicare officials say they are aggressively addressing the problem, which they attribute to restrictions in the law that created the prescription benefit and to difficulty communicating with states, pharmacies and medical providers.

Essentially, the prescription program allows coverage of the drugs but does not pay for the medical supplies and nursing help needed for the home infusion treatments to be safe and effective — a policy that effectively shuts down such treatment for some patients, even though it is substantially cheaper than the alternatives. Two GOP senators warned the Medicare agency last fall that the gap in coverage "may limit access to home infusion therapy."

Home infusion pharmacies say they are overwhelmed trying to help patients deal with the problem. "It's like I'm doing triage in a MASH unit," said pharmacist Michael Rigas, vice president for clinical affairs with Crescent Healthcare in Anaheim....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-medicare27jan27,0,3801376.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[kurth]

1. Another little-reported detail of the latest Bush clusterfuck

[hatrack]

2. Oops!

"We're Republicans - we only do campaigns!"

[hobbit709]

3. That's their plan

Kill us all off so they won't have to pay-especially since the money is gone. They've looted the country and if they won't have to write rubber checks then we won't know for a little while longer.

[zann725]

4. I worry about the "drugs" that will be given at discount rates to Seniors

and Disabled under this plan. I agree, Admin. and Wingnuts don't want to pay these recipient's Social Security "entitlement." What better way to reduced payment to the weak and old and sick than to "experiment" with their "discount" drugs.

If it sounds tin-foil, I DO apologize. If it contains even a grain of truth...I would NOT at all be surprised. Gerbels had nothing on these guys.

[AzDar]

5. Never. Never, did I anticipate that this Administration could be

so corrupt, so inept, so TOLERATED.
I mean, I knew that Bush was brain-damaged the unfortunate moment I laid eyes upon him. But I could never have imagined that this would be allowed to happen in the United States of America. Not my Country.
Every day, it's some new swindle, crime, or outrage.
My ulcer hurts.....

[FlaGranny]

6. All part of their plan -

kill off the poor and convince the rest that government is useless. Obviously it's the republicans that can't be trusted to govern properly - on purpose. They are attempting to cause chaos in programs that have been successful for decades in order to prove that government doesn't work.

[atreides1]

7. Hitler did this too

Actually only those poor who are in dire need of this program will be affected, as well as the elderly, and the disabled.

But as long as the sheep who vote Republican kepp voting that way, expect it to continue.