September 19, 2008 06:07 PM UTC

FUBAB Republican Health Care Experiences

• 7 Comments
• by: parsingreality

The other day my mother started crying. “When will this ever end?” I didn’t want to tell her the truth, which is when Dad dies.

The cause of her tears is Medicare Part D, written by the pharmaceutical industry for the Republicans.  My parents are on a program, United Health, that is a good one.  No problems there.  

In the last year my father’s meds have increased a lot.  Two of them to combat memory loss, are very expensive.  Hovering over all med planning is the Part D “donut hole” of $2400 per year.

In the fall of each of the last few years my mother has sat down, counted pills, checked the hole status for both of them, ordered meds to carry over into the new year.  A few weeks ago she and I spent many, many hours doing this with the new complexities of these new meds. As we have experienced, just when you might think everything is settled, all it takes is another new script to upset the entire apple cart of difficult planning.

Two more complexities are the free samples that we get some of (grateful but not reliabe!,) and the Canadian pharmacy options.  

The latter typically cost us more out of pocket, but nothing is counted towards the donut hole.  So far we have only gotten Aricept from a Canadian company.  Actually, they are a brokering operation for Indian pharm companies.  They stock nothing.  Dad’s generic Aricept actually came from Germany.  Good enough for the German national health care system, I would wager.  

Then we get into issues like getting a 90 day script for his new Nemenda.  After making all the obligatory phone calls and calculations, we find out that we can get a 90 day purchase ONLY from the mail order division of United Health. Locally, United Health will allow the pharmacy to release only 30 days at a time – with higher copays and more trips to the store.  Or 50 days worth from India.  Sigh.

Nemenda alone will put my father at the exact edge of the donut hole in 2009.  I guess we’ll get that from India, which will still cost us $700/yr.  But it keeps the debit account clear for his other meds.

Medicare Part D is a Republican sham, lock stock, and barrel.  From Wikipedia: “By the design of the program, the federal government is not permitted to negotiate prices of drugs with the drug companies, as federal agencies do in other programs. The Veterans Administration, which is allowed to negotiate drug prices and establish a formulary, pays 58% less for drugs, on average, than Medicare Part D.[30] For example, Medicare pays $785 for a year’s supply of Lipitor (atorvastatin), while the VA pays $520. Medicare pays $1,485 for Zocor, while the VA pays $127. Former Congressman Billy Tauzin, R-La., who steered the bill through the House, retired soon after and took a $2 million a year job as president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the main industry lobbying group.”

Medicare Part D is a blessing for those in the program, for sure.  But the price tag in terms of having to be intelligent, patient, and live with extreme complexity is high.

Do people in Canada, Britain, Germany, Spain, etc., etc. etc. have to go through this?  No! Even w/o government support drugs are SO much cheaper in other countries! Yes, Americans are supporting everyone else while seniors here are cutting meds in half.

It is Republican health care. It’s FUBAB.