[lit-ideas] Re: The Prescription Aid Scheme Charade

  • From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:05:19 -0500

Explanation: I'm really annoyed about the new US
Prescription Thing:  some anti-convulsants covered by
no plan, barbiturates and benzodiazepines excluded...
one epileptic who couldn't get his medication has
died, there may be others.  Implementing a
prescription aid scheme is not rocket science, we do
it here easily.

_________

This from Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2134456/fr/rss/

[extract]

Drug Addled
Why Bush's prescription plan is such a fiasco.
By Jacob Weisberg


President Bush thought that millions would welcome his intervention. But the effort has not gone as planned. Costs are spiraling out of control, and many of the people we wanted to help are protesting that the situation is worse than ever. Three years later, the entire poorly conceived enterprise is in jeopardy.


I refer, of course, to the administration's program to subsidize the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly. This plan, which went into effect on Jan. 1, offers so many baffling options that only 1 million of 21 million eligible Medicare beneficiaries have signed up for it on their own. Many of these early adopters, along with millions of impoverished Medicaid recipients transferred into the new system automatically, have been unable to obtain their prescriptions at the promised discounted price. The specter of citizens going without needed medications has provoked action by several governors, some of whom have invoked emergency powers to pay for drugs. Meanwhile, the estimated cost of this plan that no one likes has already more than doubled and is now projected at more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

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