Daschle Pushes Prescription Drug Plan

[Nottingham]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=99ad931d5b5b93cf

Daschle Pushes Prescription Drug Plan
REBECCA CARROLL
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., made a pitch Saturday for his chamber's version of the Medicare prescription drug benefit plan.
Features of the package passed by the House of Representatives would "place an unfair extra burden on seniors who are already struggling to pay their monthly health care bills," he said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

The House and Senate passed different prescription drug benefit plans last month, and lawmakers have begun negotiations for a final package.
The committee with representatives from both the House and the Senate made some headway Thursday when it approved a technical section of the plan that deals with Medicare contracting, patient appeals and other regulatory matters.

The relatively uncontested section of the plan would make the program's regulations clearer for Medicare providers and help recipients get information about their coverage.
snip....
Calling Medicare one of the nation's "greatest successes," he said Democrats have been proud to defend the program's promise to the elderly

:bounce: Can ya imagine our Healthcare system without Medicare
or Medicaid

I hope Republicans don't destroy it!

[rook1]

1. Who is going to pay?

....for the drug's that is...are the seniors going to pay for their own drugs...are they going to get them free? deductible?:crazy:

[Clete]

2. I hope it's free.

If we are not a barbaric society, we will recognize that people in the last third of their lives need drugs at a time when they are least able to pay for them. My hope is that Americans will have the compassion to help out those people who raised and educated them and not gripe about the small amount taken out of their checks for Medicare at a time when seniors are so dependent on it.

A benefit of the government paying for drugs is that they are in a position to negotiate price with the pharmaceutical companies to bring the costs down, which the individual seniors can't do. I have had to go the Canadian pharmacy route with my husband because it was either that or eat every other day. Other DU'ers I have been communicating with off the board are faced with similar dilemmas, even younger people, who can't help their elderly parents out because they have their own families to take care of.

[SharonAnn]

10. It's cheaper to provide the needed drugs than the hospital care.

Medicare pays for hospital care. My husband just had a stent put in a small artery that was blocked. The bill was $54,000. Thanks goodness for Medicare and Supplemental insurance.

To prevent artery clogging (or at least slow it way down) requires cholesterol lowering statin drugs. Cost is between $1,000 - $3,000 a year.

Which is cheaper?

[Pegleg Thd]

3. What they are telling us

is that seniors would have to pay medicare $35 per month to be in the program-plus- a deductible. That is part of the democrat plan.
With either plan my wife and I would not be eligible because the drugs we need are not approved by medicare or Oklahoma medicaid.
Since my last heart attack six weeks ago I am taking 6 medicines. My wife, a diabetic with hypertension, takes 7.
Some of ours come thru a mfgr's indigent program. The prices of most of these medications exceed $140 per month each. That is beyond being reasonable--it is grand theft....
We will be better off if they LEAVE THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE --GET RID OF THE PUKES-- THEN DESIGN A CANADA LIKE SYSTEM....
;(

[rook1]

4. So you are saying.....

.... that socialized medicine is the answer to the problem?:think:

[Clete]

5. Absolutely,

and it wouldn't cost anymore than our present system. What would happen is, it would take out the middle-men, the HMO's and Insurance industries, and take it off the for-profit stock market by making it a single payer system by the government. It costs Americans approximately $4,000 per person for health care, contrary to the $2,000 per person it would cost by cutting our all the administrative costs and profits of our present privitized system. Also everyone would be covered, not just those who get insurance from their work.

[lumpy]

6. Medicare is a "socialized medicine" program

that has been very successful and will conrinue to be if the damn Repubs will stop trying to do away with it. This program should be available for every U.S. citizen. Cutting down on corporate welfare could handle the medical crisis we are going through. A great precentage of people are paying through the nose or doing without coverage. It is a crisis situation and many medicos would agree.

[CityDem]

7. Why not apply a means test

Why should rich senior citizens be included in this program. If someone who has income of $75k+, why can't they afford to enroll in a private program? For that matter, why should wealthy retirees be enrolled in medicare at all? Why should the poor and middle class who pay for medicare support health insurance for Bill Gates Sr and Warren Buffet?

It is time to serious consider means testing medicare.

[Clete]

9. The problem is they will whine about entitlements.

They don't really pay that much proportionately anyway the way the system is set up now. There is a cap on what is deducted from wages per year. I think anything earned after $80,000 is not taxed, so they don't pay on their full earnings to begin with. If anyone has the actual figure, please correct me. I say we tax the whole yearly wages or salaries of these rich guys and give them health care. What they use in health care will be a fraction of what they pay in.

Think if Bill Gates has to contribute 5.2% (again correct me because I am not up on this anymore) of all his earnings, I think we can afford to throw a little bit back to him to reduce the whinning. I know they will whine anyway, but it will give them less of a choir to whine to.


If they want private insurance let them pay extra for it.

[SharonAnn]

11. I believe there is no limit on Medicare tax, only Social Security.

eom

[NewJerseyDem]

14. No way

First of all $75,000 means different things in New Jersey than other places. I'm sick of New Jersey and other wealthy states getting screwed because we make more money but have much higer cost of living. Also, if you apply means testing than medicare is viewed as welfare for the poor and not a government service for all. The rich and at times the middle class that will be exempted will no longer support medicare. Then, medicare will become less popular and will go away. Means testing is opposed by most liberals like Ted Kenndedy who threatened to filibuster prescription drugs if means testing is involved.

[lumpy]

17. No means testing

I concur

[Aaron]

15. If all seniors can be brought in under the same plan

then it becomes like Social Security - a fixture in society that no one who wants to get elected can try to do away with.

If it is a 'welfare' program, that only benefits the poor - like foodstamps, it doesn't create the dependence/expectation that it will be there among enough people to prevent cuts ot it.

Also if we provide seniors with universal single payer healthcare, then we may have be able to later expand the program to cover children, then after that adults. Incrementalism.

Although I could be wrong about all this.

[Clete]

8. I agree.

A national health care program should be modeled after Medicare and extended to all.

[NNN0LHI]

12. We can't afford it. We are spending $4 billion a month to provide security

...for Haliburton/Brown and Root, Shell Oil, and British Petroleum in Iraq.

Don

[Alexander]

19. That's just a catchy right-wing line, and it means nothing.

They inject the word "socialized" to scare people into thinking "My God, it's socialist, and that's the same thing as communist (it isn't, but most people are dumb enough to think so), we can't have those godless commies taking over our country".

In reality, the single-payer system is probably the best solution to the prescription drug problem. I take it you'd rather have the elderly choose between food and prescription drugs every week?

And if you want to do away with everything that was originally socialist, I guess we shouldn't have unions, Medicare, Social Security, a progressive income tax, free primary education, or any of the other perks that the federal government provides.

Sounds like a right-wing paradise to me.

[Nottingham]

13. The Pharmaceuticals can pay! And THEY WILL!

These guys have taken the American People and ripped them off. And when you can go to Canada or Mexico and get drugs cheaper that says something.

Our system is completely falling apart and People are gonna need Healthcare. :bounce:

Get ready Socialized Medicine is coming
Imagine the relief not to worry about your medical costs ever again

[jamesinca]

16. It is a complex issue to say the least

Auntie Pinko tries to address this in her current issue, everyone should read it. I was reading in the SF Chronicle saturday edition, www.sfgate.com that Bush has said he would veto any plan that put price controls on drugs, or helped seniors get the same meds from Canada. He felt that opening the market and selling the drugs at Canada prices was wrong and he would veto it. His argument was that it would allow unsafe meds into the U.S. I ask him, if this is true where are all of the dead Canadians? He wants the seniors on an HMO plan. My opinion, HMO's suck. They take your money and don't hold up their end of the deal. I think what he is really saying is I have a large amount of money coming from the Insurance lobby and Ely Lilly so I better get on my knees for them.

[grasswire]

18. two solutions

1. Medicare should not be the primary payer when the patient has access to private comprehensive insurance. Let the insurance company pay and medicare be the supplemental.

2. Means test. WHY NOT means test?? So many other programs are means tested. Food stamps, housing, certain kinds of loans, college assistance....so MANY programs are means tested.

Why should Medicare not be means tested?? Medicaid is. There is no reason why a retiree (for example) with a paid-for home, a fat pension, another insurance option, investments, etc., should be getting free medical care while the poorest are cut from the systems. Means test for $500,000 net worth excluding the home. Something like that.

[SharonAnn]

20. No senior has access too private comprehensive insurance

that's affordable. None! Check out the premium for private comprehensive insurance for young, healthy people and you'll find most of them can't afford that. People over 65 can't even get insurance at that rate, or double that rate, or triple that rate, etc.

[Nottingham]

21. The answer is Universal Coverage like Canada's

Old people can't qualify for Medical coverage

When you take out the Insurance companies
Pharmaceuticals and Doctors and equipment companies

it will be cheaper to be under ONE System

Rich people should get coverage just as well as poor people they pay taxes too

Everybody should be covered.