Bush's Medicare Cuts Are Ruining People's Lives

[Rose Siding]

Crucial but Costly Treatment Is Drying Up With Funding
Thousands of elderly patients who need intravenous antibodies are hurt by Medicare cutbacks. More pain could be on the way.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writer
February 28 2006

WASHINGTON — Jim Hill's world is closing in around him as his strength slips away. Until a few months ago, the 80-year-old led an active life, but lately he's been forced to spend much of the day in a hospital bed. Twice he has broken his nose in falls.....

But Hill says what turned him from a retiree involved with church and family to a patient in a wheelchair is not just the disease attacking his nervous system. It's Medicare.

To remain mobile and active, Hill depended on regular intravenous infusions of healthy antibodies. But recently, in a budget-cutting move, the government healthcare program for the elderly has reduced what it will pay for such treatments — to less than doctors and hospitals say it costs to provide them.

As a result, Hill and many others no longer get their regular treatments. And the medical alternatives are often less effective. Hill's predicament is shared by more than 10,000 Medicare patients nationwide, according to a conservative estimate.

....More fundamentally, {Bush} has proposed automatic, across-the-board cuts when Medicare spending reaches certain specified limits — the first time such cost constraints would be applied to a major benefit program.

If such reductions are imposed, Medicare authorities will have to cut reimbursement rates — as they did with Hill — or stop covering some kinds of treatments. Taken together, the changes could affect virtually all of Medicare's 43 million beneficiaries.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-medicare28feb28,1,2989658.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[BOSSHOG]

1. Exactly as planned

bush and his "conservative" base know only how to destroy and hurt and hate and ruin and lie. bush wants to ruin medicare; its his goal. He wants to cut veterans health benefits to the bone; he wants to destroy social security. Its the "conservative" way to do things.

[Rose Siding]

6. Poor Mr Hill doesn't seem to be satisfied with tax free capital gains

10,000 lives affected, so far. At least.

[schmuls]

2. Right now I am feeling such rage after reading this...how dare the

criminals who are in power do this to people? Everyone has paid into the system over the years with the assumption that they would receive the health care they needed and deserved. May these vultures who have raped our country rot in hell for what they have done. I hope Cheney and the others enjoy the extra jingle in their pockets. rant over, hate continues...

[mom cat]

23. Rage is the right word. I am seething, screaming mad. And it is going

to get worse as more and more people hit the gap in coverage.

[savemefromdumbya]

3. Just think all those wasted billions on Iraq war could've funded medicare

and think how many lives would have been saved?

[amitten]

5. This administration has no interest in saving lives.

I think there are two forces in the universe--basically a life force and a death force, working together like yin and yang.

Bush and his friends belong to the death force side--they like all things involving death and destruction, as long as it's happening to others.

[savemefromdumbya]

19. there's a saying about this

can't remember the saying - but Bush and cheney and co. will be punished soon

[area51]

4. "compassionate conservatives" strike again.

:mad: :nuke:

Republinazis hate Americans.

[acmejack]

7. Ah, "compassion".

See "conservative compassion" in action, I wonder if Bill Frist's Grandfather would be allowed to suffer in this manner? Would it be acceptable for Barbara Bush to wither in such a fashion? The pain of the poor is a different matter entirely, just as is the deaths of our children in a godforsaken desert a half a world away.

It is crap.

[Rose Siding]

8. "We warned the government", says the doc. ""We're on the problem" says HHS

But the congressman, Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) said in an interview that he was worried that the government was moving too slowly. "We have people who could in fact die if they don't get some treatment," he said.
....
"The reality of these budgetary reductions is suffering and disability," said Dr. Xavier Caro, the rheumatologist who treats Hill. "My suspicion is that it won't be too much longer before we are going to have people around the United States suffering to the point where they are succumbing."

[Rainscents]

9. What happen to my country?

This is so sad.

[JitterbugPerfume]

10. It is heartbreaking

as a senior myself, I am very grateful for my private Insurance.


neo-cons are evil

[Vinca]

11. It would almost be more humane to line the old and infirm

up against a wall and have Cheney take them out. This country is no longer recognizable and I wonder if we'll ever get it back.

[hwmnbn]

12. This is nothing less than genocide by economics .....

It is the least visible because there is no overt crime. It is death by neglect. The weakest among us will die and no further expenditures will be "wasted" on them.

This is the true face of the conservative movement. They will then pray in their churches and congratulate themselves for being christians. Fucking lying hypocritical assholes!

[Rose Siding]

13. "This is the true face of the conservative movement"

says it all.

[Rose Siding]

14. Rockefeller: Present system 'national disaster'

Terming the Bush administration’s new Medicare prescription drug program “a national disaster,” U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller on Monday told a group of Charleston area seniors experiencing problems with and anxiety over the new drug system that its days may be numbered.
....
“...You and your families are going to be so mad when this ‘doughnut hole’ hits, that some kind of chemistry will happen in the next year or so to change it,” Rockefeller said.

“The whole plan is a mess,” he said. “How can you possibly decide between 52 plans in the next couple of months, especially if you don’t know what drugs you’ll be needing in the future?”
....
Penny Stover told Rockefeller that if she enrolls in the Medicare plan, she would hit the “doughnut hole” in two months, because the 20 medications she is prescribed for heart problems and other illnesses cost so much.

“I can’t live without my medications, but I can’t afford to pay for them and my utilities once I reach the doughnut hole,” she said. “If something’s not done, I’m afraid I’ll die an early death.

“We are the middle class. We built this country, but now a lot of us are falling through the cracks and it’s not right.”

http://wvgazette.com/section/News/2006022721

[Rose Siding]

15. USA Today: Medicare red tape snares drugs

The Medicare prescription drug program's complex tangle of rules, paperwork and telephone delays is keeping some patients from drugs they have taken for years, doctors say.
Problems cited include:

• Insurers requiring "prior authorization" on some drugs, including those to treat depression, psychosis and convulsions — even for patients who have long taken the drugs.

• Strict dosage or quantity limits on some drugs, sometimes well below what a patient takes.

• Long delays on calls to insurers to make requests. Then delays of days in getting a response.
.....
Of nearly 600 problems reported to the association, the biggest chunk — about 44% — involved getting patients medications they have been taking. Many also resulted from problems getting prior authorization or from limits on how many pills are allowed.

"Dosage and quantity limits are rampant ways of restricting access," Muszynski {director of health care systems at the American Psychiatric Association} says.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-02-27-medicare-usat_x.htm

[Rose Siding]

16. WSJ: GOP-cozy companies say plan puts TOO MUCH faith in free market system

snip>
Feb 28, 2006
Wall Street Journal: The Journal examined an effort by the Bush administration to allow Medicare beneficiaries to take ownership of certain medical supplies after renting them for a specified period of time. According to the Journal, Congress this month approved a provision in the fiscal year 2006 federal budget mandating a "rent-to-own" rule under which Medicare home care beneficiaries can "take title" to their rented hospital beds after 13 months. The change is intended to reduce Medicare costs by eliminating rental payments. The Bush administration hopes to apply a similar rule to oxygen equipment. The change would allow Medicare in effect to "buy" the equipment for beneficiaries, who would be expected to "bargain for services" such as oxygen supplies and maintenance, the Journal reports. The change could save billions of dollars on the one million beneficiaries for whom Medicare currently provides oxygen therapy services, the Bush administration says. "Republican-friendly medical-equipment and homecare suppliers" that rent equipment to Medicare are "angered" by the proposal and say the Bush administration is placing too much faith in the ability of the health care system to adhere to a free-market ideology and the ability of frail beneficiaries to bargain for their care, the Journal reports (Rogers, Wall Street Journal, 2/28).

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=35676

[oneighty]

17. Bargain for their care

Medical Care Union.

United we will bargain divided we will die.

Or something like that. But we will call our Medical Care Union a Guild, or an Association, or a Federation.

A union in disguise.

180

[Yupster]

18. We really have to go to National Health Insurance

There just isn't any choice.

[earth mom]

20. Every life is precious to the rethugs, ain't it?

:grr:

[Cleita]

21. Why don't the Bush administration just admit that they don't

want to take care of the elderly. They might as well strap them on a railroad track and take care of them that way because essentially that is what they are doing. The elderly are always going to need health care and medicines to alleviate their symptoms and help them to be comfortable.

[Rose Siding]

22. Frist wants to plough ahead, continuing GOP style "reform"

Frist seeks health reforms
....So Frist wants to see medical procedures and cost information made easily available to patients and electronic medical records established so health care providers have current and complete information about the patients they're treating.

It's not a quick fix for those American employers -- including the auto industry -- that struggle to provide increasingly expensive health insurance to their employees, Frist said. But creating a system for Medicare that will help keep costs down will create a system other employers can use and follow.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060228/BUSINESS06/602280332/1019

[Rose Siding]

24. Mrs Hill says

Hill was hospitalized Feb. 6 after he became too weak to walk or stand unaided. After he stopped the infusions, Hill began to get weaker and became prone to falling. "He slides down the wall," said his wife, Helen. He is in a rehabilitation center, slowly regaining his ability to stand, walk short distances and perform simple tasks.

Said Hill: "It would have saved a lot of money if we had gone the other way, instead of this way."

This one is haunting me. Look at the *life* bad govenment is costing these people. :cry:

[OzarkDem]

25. More cuts are planned for 2007

Word on The Hill among R's is they're planning even more cuts to Medicare in the FY07 budget, probably more cuts to Medicaid, too.