[HM2Viking]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/.../schipFull.gif

[teeituptom]

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

Medicare Drugs Cost Excess $15 Billion, Report Says (Correct)

By Lorraine Woellert and Avram Goldstein
(Corrects estimate of savings cited by trade group in 13th paragraph.)
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Insurance companies offering Medicare-funded prescription drug plans are costing U.S. taxpayers almost $15 billion a year in excess administrative fees and pharmaceutical costs, a congressional study found.
The study released today also found insurers fail to pass on $1 billion a year in discounts from drugmakers to participants in Medicare, the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled.
``The use of private insurers to deliver Medicare drug coverage is driving up costs and producing only limited savings on drug prices,'' said Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The panel's Democratic staff prepared the analysis.
accessed today at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...vhBBU&refer=us .

Medicare part D is nothing more than a corporate giveaway.

That is only because Pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off usuriously

[lamazeteacher]

Take a look at the article from Bloomberg on this thread about Medicare Part D - a government endorsed plan that was doomed from the start because "the fox is in the henhouse". Those grandiose pharmaceutical companies, with their huge tax deductable marketing programs have done the thing they do best - padded their administrrative costs and passed them on to the recipient of their medicines.
It's time that negotiating skills was added to the schools' curriculum, so that someone who later becomes employed by a healthcare system learns to say "no!" to those companies that impoverish and cause medical "plans of care" to fail.
If you'd like to see the acuity of patients drop, preventive consistent care is the way to getting that. Our healthcare programs, even though they give "lipservice" to prevention, don't monitor compliance. Once it becomes obvious that a patient needs homecare for medicine management, B.P. monitoring, kidney function, DM treatment, etc. illnesses will continue to worsen, and our morbidity and mortality rates will continue to rise. Our present state of the art care is most embarressing, compared to other countries. Be part of the solution!
Whoever said the Canadian and UK healthcare systems aren't efficient, needs to learn more about them, and the standards our private insurance companies and medic-aid/cal set. They're the same, although here, we think we're getting what we pay for; that couldn't be farther from the truth!
Becoming educated, especially through the websites HMViking shares, would help those who speak/write from their gut. Kudos to you, HMViking!

[HM2Viking]

Blush......

[lamazeteacher]

We already have private insurance company rationed healthcare, as well as job difficulties for anyone whose age is over 55, since employers' insurance carriers charge an additional premium of over $1000 / month for them. Those carriers won't allow Medicare to be employees' primary coverage, either, so they can continue to charge superpremiums. I've lost 3 jobs because of that, each 2 weeks before the healthcare benefit would begin! That is also known as "Age discrimination"!