Saturday, August 7, 2010

The President's Weekly Address: Medicare Officially Safer After Health Reform

From the White House blog:

The President discusses a new Medicare Trustees report showing Medicare to be on much stronger footing as a result of the reforms in the Affordable Care Act. In addition, seniors are also already getting help with prescription drug costs when they fall into the infamous “donut hole.”



The President lays out the reforms in Medicare and shows how much the new Health Care Reform has helped already.

For me personally, this is all good news. Helping us with the Donut Hole is wonderful. This is a terrible problem for seniors who are on high cost meds. I have one I take that costs almost $2,000 a month. Yes it is crazy, but that's what we all face. Anyone who takes medicine on a daily basis faces these costs.

The saving grace in all this is our prescription drug coverage, however when Medicare D was enacted instead of trying to get lower priced drugs, the provision put in this Donut Hole. Once an individual reaches $2700 in prescription costs, until they pay out of their pocket $6,154 they are responsible for the entire cost of their meds. As you can see it doesn't take long to get there.

After the $6,154 the Medicare D coverage starts again and pays 95% of the costs. Now some supplemental plans or Medicare Advantage plans do help out with this. But even with that, I reach the Hole every year and have to pay more for my meds for several months.

I am glad this is one of the steps that was taken in the Health Care Reform. These are the little things some people think was not needed, but trust me, if you are on Medicare and you hit that hole, this is huge.

Just the fact that so far the reforms has helped Medicare's solvency is wonderful. Wonder how the GOBP will spin this.... Since according to them it was going to harm the plan so much. Of course if they do what they usually do, they will just ignore it. They never talk about the things they predict which never happen. Those are ignored and hopefully forgotten.

We should point this out over and over again, how wrong they were and if given the chance, ask them about it. If we don't start challenging some of their outlandish claims and reminding them of the lies they told, they are going to get away with it again and again, but if we start holding them accountable, maybe someone will take notice.

Those are my thoughts anyway... What are yours?

6 comments:

Sue said...

yes this is good news. There is a paragraph speaking about this on my SS post. The righties like silverfish can not dispute one thing about the positive news on SS and Medicare. If they can't refute the facts they say nothing or say something dumb to change the subject!

Sky Girl said...

Lovely post. Agreed.

Annette said...

You are right Sue, that's the only thing they can do.. They have no answers so they attack and lie or set up straw men arguments.

Annette said...

Thanks Sky Girl.. and thanks for visiting. I have missed your comments.

K. said...

It will be fun watching the repeal crowd explain why they want to do away with this.

Annette said...

Yep, and when all the seniors realize this, let the repeal crowd try to convince them.