Buy Your Own Drugs, Grandma

Human Events ^ | 6-23 | Staff Editorial

[Kevin Curry]

The politicos pass this stuff because politically powerful constituencies demand it. One of the most powerful (and growing more powerful every day) constituencies is elderly Americans. Even so-called fiscal conservatives get sucked in by the siren-song of something for nothing when they are are on the direct receiving end of the "something" (i.e., allowing other people to pay for their expensive medicine).

[Destro]

My pint was that your point never existed in the history of organized direct or indirect representative govts. I would like a specific example from history if you claim otherwise.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks for the ping, Saber! Yikes !!

Congressional Republicans estimate this will cost $400 billion over 10 years. The estimate is a joke.

"Since the program is an entitlement, there is no fixed budget," writes analyst Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation. "Moreover, the evidence from both private and public sectors in recent years suggests that future costs are likely to exceed projections. But even if they are accurate, it is not the next 10 years that matter. It is the years after that, when the full force of the Baby Boom generation hits Medicare and Social Security. Within 15 years Medicare already faces a Niagara of red ink. Adding a drug benefit without serious reforms and constraints on future spending means massive tax burdens on generations to come." Butler may be optimistic.

[ActionNewsBill]

Thank you for that. I was about to paw through a pile of printouts to find that quote and you saved me the trouble.

You're welcome, Old-Timer, (although I'm not all that far behind you).

I just did a google search, and an old FR thread (on taxes) popped up.

Thought it was appropriate though.

This senior citizen (still working) does not want to see this bill passed; reformed with waste and fraud stopped in their tracks, yes!

Well, I don't plan on retiring....I couldn't afford to. Maybe with all the free money being handed out, I'll have to reconsider.

[takenoprisoner]

Here's the catch. To afford the prescribed meds, the elderly patient needs lots of money and/or property. And when the assests obtained over the years are depleted, and the elderly patient now broke can no longer afford the needed meds...who cares? Allow them to suffer and die right? Or do we protect and defend their right to life for as long as they shall live?

If any good of the taxes we pay should actually go for something good, then this is the one good.

I say cease the funds to terrorists, like the millions to arafat and his band of murderers,(yes we gave millions upon millions to the so called palestinian authority and now millions more to the so called palestinian security) and take away those funds to aid, protect and defend our very own senior citizens.

What's the problem?

[george wythe]

I know a guy from Colombia who told me that doing business with Medicare is more profitable than importing illegal drugs; he should know, since he is a Colombian, and he also has a company that deals almost exclusively with Medicare.

When he came to the US, he opened a shoe store, since he was a shoe manufacturer in Colombia who had to leave due to the current violence; he was making a living but not getting rich. Then he discovered Medicare.

He quickly opened a medical supply company that caters to elderly patients. No, he’s not a doctor nor has he ever played one on Spanish telenovelas. He just hired the help needed after he rented a tiny warehouse; his most important employee being a guy who used to work for a clinic supervising Medicare billing, (that clinic sends him most of his clients).

He told me that the profits are so obscenely high that he does not understand why some people get greedy and try to rip off Medicare using fraud, since ripping off Medicare is done legally everyday just by following Medicare rules.

For instance, his company rents medical equipment to the elderly, and his company gets paid according to a price list published by Medicare. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but he explained to me that the price list for rental of medical equipment has no relation to reality. It’s compiled by some bureaucrat who pulls the numbers out of his mule.

If he wants to rent a wheelchair to a Medicare patient, for example, he just looks up the list that says the monthly price is $150, and that’s what he bills Medicare. The fact that the elderly person could buy the same wheelchair at a used equipment supplier for less than that is not relevant to the Medicare price list.

His company also sells some ‘health drink’ that it is mixture of sugar and artificial vitamins/minerals for the elderly who need the extra “nutrition.” He told me that the drinks are extremely cheap but Medicare pays a premium for them. Some of the elderly people just give the drinks to their pets, but because they are “free,” nobody complains.

Similar stories can be told about the other items in the Medicare price list .

Medicare is just a boondoggle that it is impossible to fix. Bureaucrats running loose distorting the free market and creating socialist wealth. . . ripping off Peter to pay Paul.

[par4]

What part of "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people" confuses you most?

Most people with a small knowledge of American history are not confused by this statement. Unfortunately for your case, it is just that, a statement made during a speech, nothing more. Although I personally think that the speech was one of the best ever written, it carries no weight in law.

Perhaps you might brush up on the Constitution, that's where the laws are.

[FITZ]

Allow them to suffer and die right? Or do we protect and defend their right to life for as long as they shall live?

But how many of those pills are actually life-saving? For adult onset diabetes, there are pills that are useful but not nearly as effective as diet and exercise ---the same thing that works well on hypertension. I was talking to a guy who decided he couldn't afford coumadin or the high cost of doctor visits because it needs to be closely monitored, he just quit taking it and started taking aspirin every day instead and has had no problems with thrombi. Luckily ---they're going to waste all our money, the system will crash ----but most of us will live just fine without all the drugs.

[FITZ]

Some of the elderly people just give the drinks to their pets, but because they are “free,” nobody complains.

I knew someone who was giving infant formula to stray cats for that same reason. Between WIC, food stamps, head start and the free milk and cheese program she had way too much food to know what to do with.

[FreedomNotSafety]

Let's go head and finish nationalizing health care. I really mean it. We are headed there anyway. The sooner we get there the quicker we can reverse it after it collapses. If we change it wholesale and not piecemeal and incrementally the shock would be horrendous. But if we do it slow Americans will not notice.

[Squantos]

I find you to be right "most" of the time.......LMAO !!

Stay Safe !

[MatthewViti]

"You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
-- Rev. William J. H. Boetcker*

"The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is." -- Winston Churchill

"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food. Government is just as fallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. ... Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia," 1787

"There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action." -- Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"

"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level."
-- Norman Mailer

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."
-- Winston Churchill

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."
-- Voltaire

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
-- Thomas Sowell

"Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good."
-- Ayn Rand

"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.'"
-- Thomas Jefferson

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."
-- G. Gordon Liddy

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis

[MatthewViti]

I'd surely consider this breaking news. I don't wish to live in darkness while the current administration seems content to take this country to the dump for the sake of getting Bush elected in 04.

[Lefty-NiceGuy]

We have got a tax cut and at the same time a military spending increase. Both of which are formitable conservative concerns.
Hmmm, cutting taxes and rasing spending. Wow that was hard.

-- NOT -- Making sure the goverment does what it's supposed to do without blowing too much money, that's hard. I'm not impressed.

Actually as POTUS, head of the executive side of the government Bush shouldn't be pushing bills which answer question of how much or little social services there should be, he should be making sure that what ever gets decided by congress gets done well. He's supposed to be out there wipping burocrats' butts into shape, downsizing unnessesary parts of the government and improving the service of the nessesary parts.

Is this happening? We won't always know. I doubt it though.

[george wythe]

I knew someone who was giving infant formula to stray cats for that same reason. Between WIC, food stamps, head start and the free milk and cheese program she had way too much food to know what to do with.

Yep.

I guess we should feel good that at least some of this overpriced foodstuff goes to kitties and puppies.

[takenoprisoner]

There's a fix for this "rip off."

HMOs came to being to prevent rip offs, fraud, and abuse making health insurance affordable for those who could afford none prior.

All we need do now is to have some of these experienced hmo folks, who are trained in the scheme of medical cons, to train medicare folks how to prevent your colombian example and others like him from "ripping us all off."

[FITZ]

And then we don't have to feel so bad when we find out some humans are eating dog and cat food. It kind of evens out.

[SupplySider]

It was only after the institution of Medicare other social programs that health care costs started to get out of control.

It was also after Medicare/Medicaid that the norm became not saving for retirement, and putting Granny in a nursing home.

[spunkets]

"If any good of the taxes we pay should actually go for something good, then this is the one good."

No it is not. If your sceinario was true, those hwo thought it was worthwhile would have jumped in to help on their own. This plan is nothing but theft, and it's promoted by the chest pounders harking thier benevolent tyrany. After this they'll ban my bacon and shoot me if I secretly have some and refuse entry to their jack-boots wanting to confiscate it.

" take away those funds to aid, protect and defend our very own senior citizens"

It's not your money; those funds belong to someone else. Their's no justification for stealing them under the gentileman's guise of an election. Including to send it overseas to a pack of vicious dogs to consume.

[george wythe]

My grandfather told me that before Medicare, people used to go to the doctor and pay off their own pockets. Since most folks could not afford high prices, doctors had honorariums that reflected their market place. Sometimes doctors were paid with goods and foodstuff, such as a chicken.

Now Medicare, the regulated medical insurance conglomerate, and malpractice lawyers have distorted the free market so out of a whack that we need to start from scratch again.

Let’s abolish Medicare, deregulate the medical insurance business, and cap awards for malpractice lawyers.

They are great minds in this country that can come up with a brand new system where the free market will drive the prices to reasonable levels for both medical services and drugs. We can make some of the medical expenses tax deductible; nevertheless, the knowledge of where their money is going will force people to shop for the best price and negotiate good deals.