I think we all now know where Brownie went after Katrina…

Posted by: dry fly | Jan 19 2006 1:49 utc | 4

$54 for one week of beta-blockers ? 3 years ago i got a prescription for a box of 50 tablets a 50mg each which i never used. IIRC i payed not more than 5 euro for that box of generica.
so either big pharma is screwing the americans royally or the person mentioned above uses betablockers for food.
my.medicare.gov looks bandwidth-challenged from here (austria) BTW.

Posted by: name | Jan 19 2006 5:09 utc | 6

I agree with you emereton. I spent last year recovering my failed health. I did the whole dental thing: removed all mercury, all metal crowns, pulled all failed root canals, and installed EAV tested materials that my body could tolerate. Then I homeopathically treated all underlying infections that kinesiological testing showed I had. Then, I underwent a series of colonics, massaged, balanced, detoxed, juiced, sprouted, and fermented, supplemented, chelated, anti-candidaed, cleansed, excersized, steamed and saunaed, meditated, sleep, sunned, watered, rested and healed. Never used toxics or aromatics in the house, but by the end even my kitties were eating a raw diet. I did get better. It took six months and cost me 50K. I was lucky that I could, and chose to, afford it. Most people in America can’t. That is why we have a “disease-care” and not a “health-care” system.
Still, no matter what you do, we all get old and, if we live long enough, eventually need medical care. I took care of an aging mother after a stroke for three years. I worked with her diet, fed her quinoa and steamed kale and veggie juice till she accused me of trying to starve her to death, but that is not enough for someone that old and sick. She made a lot of changes for a senior, but still she needed medication (and lots of it) as a result of years of poor living habits like smoking, and if she didn’t have good health care we would have been sunk. Still, I ended up spending 50K out of pocket for her. It is very hard to change people’s belief systems when they are old and ailing and they have always believed in standard medical practice. Look, my sister’s a doctor; I fight with her all the time. She was an organic hippie, but the brainwashing of med. school turned her reactionary.
The point is, we still need a health and disease care system that works for us, not to enrich the system. My sister is a specialist and makes $400K/yr. Five years ago, when she interned, she made 35K. Is she worth that much money or is our system skewed. When I visit her all I hear are stories about her little “game” she plays with her doctor friends: namely, how to scam as much as you can from the drug companies. They get flown to Miami Beach, eat in Madonna’s resturant, drink $150 bottles of wine and then go to a 1/2 hour lecture to justify this Dyonesian frivolity. It’s all a game to her. But we are paying. Our system is seriously broke; its the same legalized bribery system that politics is. Eventually,it will implode on its own accord, but that may come after the great die-off, not before it. How many will have to suffer? There is nothing wrong with activism to see people get proper care. And we will never completely do away with drugs.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 19 2006 6:26 utc | 8

C’mon. This top dog can’t bark. Has Reuters merged with the National Enquirer? I know news has dumbed down, but sheeesh……
Which head did his wife marry? Which one looks in the mirror in the morning? Which one shaves? Can they see each other? Which one wears the hat? Which mouth eats the food?
making masks out of manure and trying them on his face. Which one? How does his wife feel about this unique “hobby”, which appears to be quite unusual, even for Poland. He must smell great in bed. Can he make barnyard sounds, too? I bet his wife is as depressed as him, or as delusional.
a 45-pound second head growing out of his abdomen just above his hip Can he give himself “head”? And would that be a third head?
transplant Mr. Dubernski’s real head up onto his shoulders Medical science hasn’t progressed that far. A few too many nerves. You mean, we can behead somebody and sew a new one on? Can we try this out on Bush and Cheney? Far less nerves in Bush’s case.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 19 2006 7:02 utc | 10

Did you hear the news about Edward?
On the back of his head he had another face
Was it a woman’s face or a young girl?
They said to remove it would kill him
So poor Edward was doomed
The face could laugh and cry
It was his devil twin
And at night she spoke to him
Things heard only in hell
But they were impossible to separate
Chained together for life
Finally the bell tolled his doom
He took a suite of rooms
And hung himself and her from the balcony irons
Some still believe he was freed from her
But I knew her too well
I say she drove him to suicide
And took poor Edward to hell
(Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan)

Let me see if I understand this correctly: the Bush Medicare plan is underfunded and broken. After weeks and weeks of him flying around the country on the taxpayer dime to promote this poorly planned fiasco of a “Medicare reform program,” the Preznit is now going to send members of his Cabinet around the country to…erm…promote this poorly planned fiasco.
Here’s an idea: how about we use that travel money to instead fix the damn program. You know, so senior citizens can get the drugs they need to keep them alive right now, instead of months down the road.
I’m thinking the money would be better spent on drugs for the elderly, the poor and the disabled than on Air Force One Presidential M&Ms, large PR backdrops and security details. Especially when it’s being wasted on promoting a program that doesn’t even freaking work. I’m just sayin’.

From ReddHedd at firedoglake

Posted by: beq | Jan 19 2006 12:18 utc | 12

If you are on medicaid and are dual eligible by state and federal medicare, you had to sign up or were signed up Jan. l. I didn’t even realize that.

Posted by: Obs | Jan 19 2006 13:25 utc | 14

Here’s an idea: how about we use that travel money to instead fix the damn program. You know, so senior citizens can get the drugs they need to keep them alive right now, instead of months down the road.
Again, firedoglake is a liberal blog–that is to say they have ultimate faith in Bush’s incompetence. The fact of the matter is that the program is doing just what it was designed to do: open the door to the privatization, and eventual elimination, of Medicaid and Medicare, and create so much confusion that they will try to push the meme that government doesn’t work, is inefficient and private corporations can handle this so much better. Plus, as an added benefit, create a Daily Outrage to allow the Propaganda Machine its daily dose of exercize, and the sheeple their daily dose of confusion. If they kill off and impoverish a slew of dem voting seniors, well, so much the better. Yes, it is hard to grasp the evil murderous mentality of this administration, who regard the populace as an obstacle to do away with, not a constituent to serve, but that is the only way to explain the pattern of the totality of their actions.
The point is there is nothing to “fix” about this, it should be repealed, period. Then we can work towards universal coverage, which is the real need and right of citizens, not this bullshit.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 19 2006 15:04 utc | 16

Mark Schmitt at tpmcafe explaining how the administration planned to screw up this program, but not suffer for it:

I tried to write an essay called, “Bad government is good politics.” It turned out not to be publishable because it was largely speculative and because the Medicare bill was really the only example I had at the time. But I wish I”d stuck with it. . My thesis was that Republicans knew there would be a backlash against the Medicare bill, but they understood that it would take the form of a backlash against government in general, and that would be to their advantage. Seniors struggling over a dining table covered with complicated forms, small-print prescriptions, and no-win choices weren”t going to be muttering, “Goddamn Dennis Hastert, I”m never voting for his party again.” They would be muttering, “Damn government, can”t do anything right.”
Seniors have been bonded to government, and hence to the Democratic Party, by the painless single-payer health system known as Medicare. The Medicare drug benefit would, in effect, reverse this bond. In another piece last year, I referred to the prescription drug benefit as an “anti-entitlement,” because it takes all the advantages of an entitlement — predictability, fairness, efficiency — ﾊand turns them on their head. As I see it, the political goal of the Medicare drug bill was not to cement a new alliance between seniors and the Republican Party around a government program, but primarily to destabilize the old alliance.
[snip]
Democrats have a very complicated (but absolutely true) story to tell here: They have to show that the Medicare bill was a guaranteed disaster from the start, that its consequences were not accidental but imtimately related to the corruption of the Republican majority, and that there is an alternative that would do more an cost less, and that Democrats would make it happen. We cannot assume that this story will occur automatically to people as they struggle with the program.

Remember, even if you don’t have faith in the Dems, the admin can still use Dems [really, any extant or potential opposition] to cover their asses. So it does matter what sort of story gets told about them.
As Leavitt’s motto articulates so cogently, the screwup was planned.

Posted by: citizen | Jan 19 2006 16:20 utc | 18

Cancer is caused by carcinogens.
True, and the biggest carcinogen is oxygen. Cancer is a natural death. However, it can often be treated and life thus prolonged. And you it is smart to avoid extra carcinogens (like tobacco smoke) whenever you can.
Just to underscore the point Malooga made upthread.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 19 2006 19:26 utc | 20

which can’t hold the ampoules anyway as it doesn’t stay cool enough.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 20 2006 1:56 utc | 22

(sarcasm)
What is all this indulgent weak rabbitting about State Paid Medical Care ?
Countries like Switzerland have no such thing – each person is responsible! for their health care (private insurance) and for the care of their dependents should they have any (parents and/or children.)
(end friendly sarcasm)
The US health care system is the most expensive and the most inefficient in the world. About 13 % GDP and no or only a tiny bang for the buck at all for a large segment of the population. This state of affairs is starkly exemplified by the fact that some hospitals run free programs for children who are mysteriously ill – that is, fail to thrive. Highly qualified and fantastically paid professionals run series of tests and consultations on these children and write up recommendations, regimens, advise on medecines etc. However, to be well, the children need what doctors cannot provide: a salubrious home (or a home itself), with a some measure of quiet and cleanliness; they need a table and chair for eating at their level; they need a caretaker to eat with them; they need ‘healthy’ food; they need to eat three times a day. I’ll stop there, except for the TV: babies and under 3s should not often be exposed to constant noise which comprises piped speech (and faces).
That is the first thing that needs to be fixed. Medecine is not a high tech panacea that can solve problems like failure to thrive, allergies, etc. Poverty makes people ill. Simple.
The second thing is the employer-employee health insurance link. These ‘benefits’ offered by employers when they could not compete to find employees in other ways should be abolished. They harm the employees, the pop. at large and the business itself.
The third thing that needs to be fixed (beyond the good care for the rich, bad care for the poor equation) is waste / profiteering. The fourth is partly replacing individual treatment of individual ills with rational public health care policies, which means, for example, negotiation and compromise between pro-birthers and those who would want to distribute free condoms. Or banning some cosmetics, etc., as pointed out above.

Posted by: Noisette | Jan 20 2006 17:18 utc | 24