1 in 5 pay more in Medicare Rx plan

Mildred Lindley sits at her kitchen table in Jonesboro, Ark., talking about her Medicare drug benefit plan Wednesday April 26, 2006. Lindley is stuck in a hole, the doughnut hole, 'right in the middle of it,' she says, that comes with Medicare's new prescription drug benefit.
[...]
Medicare officials acknowledge that many low-income seniors and disabled Americans are paying more. They are urging drug companies and states to continue assistance to the poor who rely on expensive medications.

"Any extra help they need can and should be provided by those other sources," says Kathleen Harrington, director of external affairs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Because the Medicare law was passed to pad the pockets of pharmaceutical overlords, not help deliver medication to elderly and disabled Americans.

In one case, a 59-year-old Newburgh, N.Y., man died in March after he stopped taking medications he could no longer afford, according to his pharmacist and his cousin. Eddie Rosa, whose death was first reported by the Middletown, N.Y., Times Herald-Record, lived alone and suffered from heart disease, diabetes, seizures and other mental and physical conditions.

Despite those illnesses, his pharmacist, Marty Irons, says, "I really think he'd be alive today if he had all his medicines." Adds his cousin, Dolores Reano, "When Medicare came in, it just blew him away."

When the Medicare drug program went into effect, Steve Worrell, 53, of Black Hawk, Colo., lost the free medications he had been getting from a drug company for his disabling arthritis. Faced with a $5,400 annual bill under Medicare, he spaced out his injections. His condition worsened. "You start swelling up, and you start twisting more," he says.

Maria Oranje of Oakley, Calif., who turned 100 on Wednesday, is luckier. She takes 26 medications, but since she was switched from Medicaid to the Medicare program in January, her co-payments have been picked up by her daughter, Greta Heartfill, 62.
[...]
In the ongoing, Grover Norquist spawned effort to utterly destroy all social programs and channel all wealth of this nation into the fat pockets of a few dozen corporate kings, rather than invest in the people, the mighty George Bush, brush cutter and warrior in chief, and his scum sucking captains in the repiglikkkan congress have put the screws to the vulnerable, and often helpless, elderly.

Must be all that love of Jesus the repiglikkkans are so into to, praise the lord.

This is not necessary, this abuse of old people.

And not only is it not necessary at this level, there is no reason Americans should pay so much more for medication than the rest of the world, except the pharmaceutical companies want it that way, the pharmaceutical companies who hide research that shows their products are unsafe then release deadly products anyway, the pharmaceutical companies that have demanded to be made legally free from liability for killing and maiming people with dangerous products, and have gotten that freedom, thanks to the republican party.

"I have not seen a proposed change that I'm supportive of yet," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told a group of health care reporters in February. He accused Democrats of mounting "huge campaigns to discredit" the new law and said it should be given a chance to work.

We are already paying for universal health care, with our most expensive healt care in the world, so why aren't we getting it?
I'm more ashamed every day to be an American.