Entries for September 2009

Source: Associated Press Medicare is looking like a big fat piggy bank for health care overhaul. President Barack Obama and the Democrats want to pay for much of their plan to cover the uninsured by cutting hundreds of billions from the Medicare budget over the next 10 years. From its inception, the health plan for seniors has been kept afloat...

One of the most vexing problems I have faced in the past few years are issues arising from the failure of insurers to meet my needs. It seems like the insurance companies are putting profits before people; it's taking a devastating toll on the health of all people, but especially seniors and the disabled.  I happen to be both. For the past ...

If the health-care reform bill under consideration in the House of Representatives becomes law, seniors will pay Medicare prescription drug program premiums that are 20-percent higher than they would be under current law, says the Congressional Budget Office.   The increase in premiums will start with an average 5-percent hike in 2011 and re...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has announced that a study featured in the September issue of Psychiatric Services, an APA journal, has found that patients with mental illness with problems obtaining medications through Medicare Part D are more likely to visit a psychiatric emergency department. According to an APA's press release, t...

By MARK MILLER Many of the protesters showing up at this month's town hall meetings on health care reform are old enough to be on Medicare-or they're pretty close. They're also old enough to know better; here we have beneficiaries of a gigantic, successful federal health insurance program screaming at their legislators to keep the government ou...

Source: The Windsor Star A very large number of people die every day around the world because they don't have access to affordable medicines. The reason for that, the big drug companies' monopoly over medicines they got patented. Canada did pass a law in 2004 to allow less expensive generic medicine versions being exported to developing countries...

By Frank Frisch I found out the hard way recently that I was not well-informed regarding the infamous Medicare “doughnut hole.” When I went to pick up my medications at a local pharmacy, I was told that one of my monthly medications — and normally co-pay $28 with my insurance — was going to cost me $268.99. I have a heart condition and, quite fra...

Source: Kaiser Health NewsCBO Chief Douglas Elmendorf’s post on his Director’s Blog outlining how changes to Medicare Part D would raise premiums but cut beneficiaries prescription costs triggered a round of news stories, and blog chatter.Jacob Goldstein writing for the WSJ’s Health Blog, noted that the Medicare drug program’s infamous doughnut hol...

Source: Washington Post OpinionChuck Blahous's framing of the COLA conversation was a few ticks off the mark ["What Drop in Benefits?," op-ed, Aug. 24]. It is not a flap or a controversy. It is simply an unprecedented event in the history of Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. The fact is that 2010 will mark the first year since COLA increa...