I’ve Changed My Mind About “Death Panels”
By Bronwyn's Harbor on August 25, 2009 at 6:01 PM in Campaign promises, Current Affairs, Hoodwinking, Medicare, Obama's Broken Promises, President Barack Obama, Social Security, Universal Health Care
My good friend and neighbor, let’s call him, Roger, depends entirely on his pitifully small Social Security check as well as Medicare. He called up his senators and representative yesterday, and also sent all three of them this e-mail:
I am stunned that the Obama administration has the nerve to refuse to give senior and disabled citizens a cost-of-living increase for the first time in a generation.This, coupled with the $500 billion cut to Medicare to finance Obama’s proposed health care plan, confirms my suspicions that Obama is creating his debt-riddled programs by squeezing the pittances given to seniors and disabled people.
I am a die-hard Democrat who votes a near-straight Democratic ticket, but I will not vote for Democrats any more if they do not stand up to Obama’s destructive measures to steal from those of us who’ve worked the longest and hardest to support this nation.
WHY — WHY??? — ISN’T THIS THE TOP STORY IN THE NEWS?
The woman who answered the phone at my friend’s representative’s office told him that they’d been inundated all day by calls from seniors who are frantic about the cancellation of the COLA (Cost of Living Allowance) that every Social Security check recipient depends on, every January, in order to keep up with increasing costs for groceries, drugs, insurance, and more.
By the time he’s done paying his rent, utilities, and car repairs/insurance, my friend can’t afford to buy anything else but groceries and laundry soap. Forget about buying new clothes! Forget about subscribing to magazines or buying books! Forget about going to the movies or even renting a movie! Forget about doing anything the least bit unconnected with his survival, literally. Every spare penny has to be used to buy items like Benadryl, which is one of many, many drugs not covered by Medicare Part D.
Then there are drugs like Nexium, which Roger must have because he has GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) due to his hiatal hernia, and Roger “upchucks” for hours after every meal, no matter how small the meal. The cheaper drugs for GERD, like Prilosec, do not work for Roger. Nexium is the one drug that works perfectly, but Nexium’s co-pay cost is nearly $70 per month.
Roger also has severe anxiety attacks and not one single Plan D insurance plan — Roger checked every plan available — covers the medicines he must take to treat his anxiety. There’s not even a co-pay. Roger has to pay the full price for the two anxiety drugs, which cost him $40-65 per month, depending on the dosage and number prescribed.
Because of the costs of his anxiety medications and the many other medication co-pays for additional conditions which include high blood pressure and arthritis — plus his $45 monthly premium to the Plan D insurance company — Roger cannot afford to take Nexium at all. So Roger endures constant “upchucking” and heartburn all day, every day, and he faces the danger that his GERD will lead to esophageal cancer.
Then there’s what Roger pays for Medicare. He pays $95+ for Part B. He pays $149/month for Part C. He pays $140-200 for Part D (drugs), which includes the monthly premium and co-pays and the drugs that not one drug insurance plan covers.
Let’s be clear about one thing for all of the folks who keep equating Medicare with Universal Health Care: Medicare is NOT free. Roger pays at least $400 per month for the supplemental policies, procedures and drugs to make up for everything that basic Medicare does not cover. It is not the perfect coverage everyone is now depicting it to be. There are many problems with it, not the least of which is the issue that spurred Roger’s calls and emails.
My friend remembers his younger years, when he used to dread the month of January since it’s one of the coldest months of the year and it’s a time of post-holiday letdown.
But the last few years, he has waited with great excitement for January to arrive because it meant that his check from Social Security would arrive with a small increase that would let him buy 4 apples per month instead of 2 apples per month. And January’s check meant that he could buy a chicken breast once a month instead of just chicken backs and wings.
But January 2010 will be the most depressing month he’s suffered. He won’t buy those 2 extra apples, and he will buy beans instead of chicken.
Those precious treats — those 2 apples and that piece of chicken — won’t brighten his meals.
He’ll add more water to the bean soup to make it last longer — he’d like to add a can of broth but that’s too expensive, so the extra water will have to do.
And he’ll wonder why there’s any point in going on when he won’t even be able to afford the most modest treats.
It is hard to fathom having to watch one’s pennies so closely – not in a metaphorical sense, but in an honest-to-goodness reality of not being able to buy but the barest necessities.
My friend used to joke with me about the “death panels” and he suspected that Sarah Palin was exaggerating the problem. He doesn’t laugh anymore. He is certain that Barack Obama does not care about people his age and that Obama wishes that people as old as he would just die sooner because keeping them alive costs too much.
I wish you could see his face like I can. His mouth is tight, his lips fixed in a grim downturn. His cheeks are pale and drawn. His eyes have lost their sparkle. His forehead is wrinkled more than ever before. He is too young to look like that.
Worst of all, his spirit is broken. He knows that Obama’s plan to cut $500 billion from Medicare means that everyone who depends on Medicare will get less care and will wait much longer for appointments and tests.
He expects that his Medicare supplemental insurance premiums will go up, even though he will get no more money from his Social Security check. And he has no idea how he will pay for those necessary supplemental premiums, so he has plans to cancel them all. Which means that he is gambling that he will not need hospitalization, let alone blood tests, for the next year. A dangerous game of roulette, to be sure.
And he knows that January 2011 will be just as bad since the Obama administration has announced that there will be no cost-of-living increase in 2011 either.
He’ll have to add more and more water to his bean soup. It won’t nourish him but he hopes it will make him feel full and that the hunger pangs won’t be too painful. He has no choice.
I don’t know what to say to him. When going to the food bank is mentioned, he has his pride, but even more than that, he knows the food banks in his area have less food to give out now and are all overwhelmed by mothers with children to feed. Those children, he believes, have more right to that dwindling amount of food than he does. And he believes that Obama feels that way too.
Roger confessed to me that he hopes that the “Death Panels” are indeed part of Obama’s health care legislation because he expects that death will be a welcome relief from a life that doesn’t permit him the simplest joys like an apple or a piece of meat.
He knows that his president considers him the unworthy, and he wonders if the president is right, this president whose stepfather was an oil man, who went to the most exclusive private school in all of Hawaii, and who went to an Ivy League university. Is that man right? If so, he hopes that the least the president can do is to provide him with an “exit plan.”
I still don’t know what to say to him. But I do know that this president promised him hope. Instead, he has given him despair…
Postscript: I bet some of you think that Roger should swallow his pride and apply for Medicaid. He can’t. He gets $50 too much per month from Social Security to qualify for Medicaid. Fifty dollars. Even though his medical costs make quick work of that additional money, it doesn’t matter. Once again, this is not a perfect system, no matter how much the new party line wants to push that it is. Reading the fine print — reading the print at ALL — exposes a lot of those lines to be just that, lines.
by Ronald Scott
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