Was at the pharmacy tonight. Seniors are really getting screwed

[cantstandbush]

with the medicare prescription drug program. Next door neighbor who last month paid $5 co-pay for his prescriptions was shocked to find that he now must pay $20. He didn't have the $20. Someone at the pharmacy gave it to him. The pharmacist told me that many pharmacys are just giving poor seniors a weeks supply of meds to get them over the week-end and until they can get things straigntened out.

The Bushbots suck big time!!!

[Ilsa]

1. Too many plans? Not signed up? Or just hosed? I guess everyone

will get it figured out eventually. I wonder how many trips to the emergency dept will be made because people didn't get their meds, though?

What a effin' mess.

[LostinVA]

38. They won't get it figured out -- it has to be changed

The law is set up to screw Seniors. Gotta love AARP, and the illegal forced vote in Congress.

[Warpy]

2. Copays are up and so are drug prices

for the cardiac and type II diabetes drugs that seniors are likeliest to be on.

This whole thing is a colossal ripoff by Big Pill from beginning to end.

Maybe seniors wil finally catch a clue and stop voting for GOP tax cuts!!!

[Cleita]

5. The big problem is that those of us who didn't vote for

the Big Pill rip off are caught in it as well.

[OzarkDem]

31. IIRC pharma companies raised prices

just after the bill for this rip-off was signed into law. They plan to cash in while they can.

[0007]

3. I got nailed at the pharmacy today. And with the rising price of food

and energy. It is has become a chore to stay ahead of the game.

[Cleita]

4. Yep, it's dying time for many old farts.

I'll bet a lot of them wish they hadn't considered Rush Limbaugh their best friend. Those of us who didn't think Rush was a god, will also get swept into this seniorcide.

[GrumpyGreg]

6. Old farts? Good lord!

[Cleita]

9. What are you upset about?

You know what others think about us.

[GrumpyGreg]

13. Maybe that's what they think about us but I'll be damned if

I would encourage it.

[Cleita]

16. I'm not encouraging this. It 's a fact.n/t

[KoKo]

25. When the media targets the 18 to 29 and 18 to 49 year olds...one knows

that "something bad" is afoot. I have to hope that the MSM is now so full of itself that it's like one of those Bush Bubbles waiting to explode and when they try to convince Americans that their parents are just "Old Farts' to send off to dies on ice flows (when their time of usefulness had gone) like I read the Eskimos in Alaska used to do, then I will figure it's time to find a way out on my own before I watch that kind of stuff go on around me.

[PWRinNY]

7. Neocon plan for years

Genocide of the elderly and the poor. That's been what they've been trying to achieve for years now. Make them choose between meds, food, shelter, or heat to keep them alive. These are our PARENTS, our grandparents, the neocons are screwing. Purely hateful. :grr:

[meow2u3]

23. Those neocons are DEMONS

Either that, or they've sold their soul to Satan for money and power.

[demnan]

8. It took me a couple hours researching

and calling to get my mother's plan straightened out. They changed everything on her this year, just like everyone else. Fortunately she had a supplemental plan and the folks at AARP are running it. But if you didn't call or have this particular retirement plan, yes you would be screwed. And how many seniors can really get around all this paperwork? I can tell you, it wasn't easy for me to figure out. I just wonder how many will die because of this.

[Cleita]

15. Many, if family doesn't help out.

This is their plan that family should bear the burden of their old relatives as well as their children. Not a bad concept but families need help as well and when they are earning less money these days than they can survive on, how do they take on additional burdens?

[jeffreyi]

21. me too

I spent hours on the phone, and finally signed my mom up for something, and I just hope it's ok. there's not a chance that someone like my mother could figure this out and turn over the necessary rocks....and I'm not sure I did it correctly either. The people at medicare and the insurance companies were friendly and reasonably informative, given the situation, but it was clear that they were overwhelmed.

[dogman]

10. Illinois has announced they will cover seniors temporarily.

I heard today 14 states were doing this. Th rotten thing about this is the local GOPers are after the Governor for being over budget while they are causing these crisis at the national level. Some of these people will never even figure out who screwed them.

[SoCalDem]

19. THIS WAS THE PLAN all along, folks..

Give big bucks upfront, years away from the actual plan, to the Pharma companies.. Give them plenty of time to increase prices..

then make the stupid plans so useless that people don't sign up.. Then dump the unsigned-up ones into any-ole plan and when they cannot pay for meds, the STATES have to pick up the pieces..

It's basic State's Rights 101...

If the states "can handle" it , why should the federal gubbmint even continue the plans..

Look for them all to phase out by '08, and of course by then, pension plans and supplementals will have dropped the seniors..

:(*

[KoKo]

26. Yep....that seems to be what it was all about...

disgusting...everything about them is..

[OzarkDem]

32. You're describing it exactly

This plan was never meant to work in the long run, and was contrived to steal more taxpayer dollars while killing Medicare as we know it.

[FreedomAngel82]

33. Yep

Look at why they really don't want a national health care plan.

[FreedomAngel82]

11. Everything is so horrible

:cry: I don't feel like I live in America anymore but some third world country in south America or something. :(

[stillcool]

12. I am scared sh*tless...

.that something's going to happen to my meds. I am not a senior, but I've been taking psych medication for years, and it isn't pretty when I don't take them. Being dependent on a drug sucks.

[Sadie5]

17. Anyone else sickened

as Bush prances around the stage as he has yet another photo op and tells us how well the trickle down economy is. The states will have to come up with a way to help these folks pay for their meds.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

24. and don't forget...

he saw incredible improvement in New Orleans yesterday... claims the infrastructure is back up and running! :eyes:

Anybody got a pin...? I SO WANNA POKE HIS BUBBLE! :mad:

[Rainscents]

14. I know of RW Nutcase Senior who is on oxygine tank

I warn her last years before election what will happen... She got very angry with me. I just walked away.

[ClassWarrior]

22. So, how does she feel now?

NGU.

[Rainscents]

30. I don't know, I was so digusted at her action, I decide not to see her

again. Maybe I should give her a visit now.

[Kansas Wyatt]

18. NeoCon Logic: It's not about the prescription coverage

It's about the profit margin.

BushBots: 'See our insurance and pharmaceutical corporations are doing great and helping our seniors at the same time, and that means America is doing great! Now if we can just get those lazy welfare people to stop driving up the cost of grandma's prescriptions.'

[Rainscents]

20. When people have to start taking care of their ill parents and their...

medical needs might be the final straw for people to wake up from sleeping away for past 26 years!

[Ian David]

27. Leaflet the retirement homes and pharmacy parking lots. n/t

[ClassWarrior]

28. My thought exactly.

NGU.

[fujiyama]

29. Why is it

that a majority of seniors voted for Bush in '04?

IIRC, this was one of those groups he made inroads with. In all honesty, I would LOVE to ask who they voted for. If they did vote for Bush, I really don't feel any sympathy for them.

[OneBlueSky]

34. Medicare Part D was NEVER intended to benefit patients . . .

you think that's something BushCo cares about? . . .

no, the purpose is twofold: 1) to help bankrupt Medicare and, ultimately, the US government so that major social programs will die due to lack of funding, and 2) as a massive giveaway to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries (who, btw, wrote he law) . . .

[xchrom]

35. one cannot reasonably say this is not the intention.

republicans know that by privatising those without will get screwed -- this is an historical fact.

how well did the poor elderly do before social security?

now here we are again.

[Hidden Stillness]

36. To the "Oh, They Deserved It" Routine Shown by Replies on This Thread

Older people always vote for Democrats--they supported Gore, they voted for Clinton twice, all majorities; they always support Democrats. The fact that Kerry lost this group, I blame largely on Kerry's "framing" "D"LC shit. Recall also that Kerry lost another totally reliable group that always votes Democratic, single (esp. working) women, and lost a small but significant part of two other groups, black voters--who always almost unanimously vote Democratic--and Latino voters. It is not enough just to blame each group individually; it is stupid.

I know I felt all along that Kerry could have gotten the percentage of single women's vote--as Gore did, overwhelmingly--if Kerry had just once referred to protecting Social Security, raising the minimum wage, day care at work, going after deadbeat fathers who will not pay child support or alimony, etc., etc., all the desperately needed things that Democrats have always pursued, and gotten reliable votes for, but that Kerry did not mention. I remember being angry about it; it didn't happen. Instead, you had an entire campaign based on advice from Joe Biden and the corporate consultants at "D"LC, Inc., with blah lines like "They're opening firehouses in Baghdad, and closing them in...(wherever)," and even after the "Benedict Arnolds" line about corporations that outsource jobs was such a huge success here in the Midwest, "D"LC, Inc. didn't like it, and it was dropped! Instead, we had a total emphasis on Kerry's military background--yet, oddly enough, never answering the slander and lies from Republican Swift Boat Liars Who Weren't Even There--and from the media, a total emphasis on how supposedly aloof Kerry was.

The thing you have to remember about the media coverage of the Medicare Part D issue, before the "election" and before its implementation, was that it was all completely favorable, very muddled with no details, Bush was never pressed to explain how anything would work, and anyone who opposed or even questioned the "plan" was attacked as being against health care coverage for seniors--you know, the way they cover everything else. Since most older people always rank health care and prescription prices as huge concerns, and since Kerry never exposed what the thing was really about nor did the corporate/complicit media, it was allowed to go almost the whole way through the campaign, as some "great new thing." Toward the end, around October, probably too late to affect things, and censored by the media, seniors' groups, (even the AARP which is not a seniors' advocacy group; recall when they at first supported the Plan D crap, and many thousands of AARP members turned in their membership, and THEN AARP opposed it), people started to learn what it was, and support for it--and Bush--dropped. A Pew Research poll showed support for Bush among people over 65 to be at 43 percent, and John Kerry had a 10 point lead (also Zogby). "Oddly," two of the three swing states that had always been Democratic among older people but were now suddenly for Bush, were Ohio and Florida. I have never believed that.

Even though opposition to the Part D thing was increasing just before the election, as people FINALLY got some information on it, and not just advertising, it was not enough to make up for the completely favorable treatment of Bush, ('the war hero freedom fighter with all-true morals who never never gets drunk or uses cocaine") by the corporate media, and lack of alternate sources. Older people were treated as second-class voters by the Kerry/"D"LC campaign, as they always do; it offended me. I knew they would pay a price for ignoring the wonderful New Deal generation, and they did. Older people have always hated this bill, the huge Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed only 1-of-5 planned to sign up, and there has been such a backlash against it that even Republicans now admit that Bush/Rove have suffered for it. If you have any contact with local Representatives, or call them at all, you will know what a huge, and totally negative, response there has been to this horrible crap, (which many Democrats inexplicably voted for too, by the way). It is an outrage and should be scrapped totally, for a straightforward Medicare coverage, that will cover all real diagnoses and sort out the bills themselves, as they do with all actual Medicare coverage.

[area51]

40. Um, "Older people always vote for Democrats"

Let me introduce you to my Faux-loving nazi elderly relatives who still think GW Hoover walks on water.

I think perhaps only when their Social Security checks stop coming in will there be the possibility of them waking up.

[chat_noir]

37. Pharmacies: great places for those IMPEACH BUSH flyers and stickers

:grr:

[cantstandbush]

39. Now you are talking. Send idea to www.justicefornone.

They will make handbills that can be used. It's a great site.