Fitz!

Faux Fitz !

Ah man, I almost had a Fitz…

That picture is so dang sad. For shame.

Thanks for shining the spotlight on this issue, Christy.

this week is FROGMARCH SEASON and the servers are wobbly? Oh well, let’s hope the new server farm can take the incredible hammering this site soon will be getting !

the Faux Fitz above refers to the fact that this is a repeat of the comments section which has disappeared so any Fitzzing is simply a repeat…

With all the speculation over the weekend, y’all picked a great time to switch servers! OTOH, if the rumors turn out to be true and Fitz lowers the boom on Rove today/this week, you could be getting some serious traffic at FDL and new servers could come in really handy . . .

Jane & Christy, glad you’re back up on the Medicare post – is there any chance of recovering the earlier comments, or have they been eternally EPU’d?

Tom Edsall on a WaPoo chat this morning said we could learn as soon as early afternoon about Rover’s imminent difficulties . . .

Hmmm, Was wondering what happened.C’mon Jamie,you da man!

The Medicare drug thing actually makes me glad my mother died last year. (I’d rather have her alive, thank you, but I think she’d have had a hard time dealing with this mess, even with her then-full set of marbles.)

To see the debate among health policy wonks on merits of deadline. You can check out debate on the deadline at Talkingpointsmemo Cafe,

http://drugbilldebacle.tpmcafe.com/

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2….._0515.html

^^^ Breaking all over – They are tracking reporters phone calls to identify leaks.

http://tinyurl.com/a6erq

^^^ HELP IMPEACH TODAY

Keep the pressure on Congress… Talking about impeachment wakes people up… They question, it’s a strong motivator to get people thinking. It also lets Congress know how intense the dissapproval is for this President… They seem to be a little slow on the uptake. So please:

1) Sign petitions if you have not done so
2) Send a letter to Congress (both Senators & House rep)
3) Send a copy to the media
4) Enlist friends and family to help, ask them to chip in time
5) Spread the link around, email it (with a request to forward) post it on a blog, or in the comments of a news story.

Help out!!!

Thanks :)

Thank God you’re back – I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms (WaterCatMeadow).

Regarding Medicare, Atrios worries that “slamming” may be on the rise:

I’m not sure how common it is these days – I doubt it is as much as it used to be given the rise of cell phones – but I’m sure you all remember a few years ago when long distance service slamming was all the rage. Basically telemarketers, to earn their pay, would just switch your long distance service on you without bothering to get your approval. It happened to me a few times.

A senior I know who had managed to get enrolled in a Medicare D program found herself magically enrolled in a second program when her enrollment information arrived in the mail. Of course you can’t be enrolled in 2, and for reasons known only to Mark McClellan it’ll take 6 weeks to be disenrolled from the second plan. Until then will her original plan still function? We’ll see…

NATIONAL HEALTH COVERAGE. Screw this complicated shit. Worse than doing your taxes. It’s only lives on the line.
—–
Wondering IF/WHEN our man at tooth0out will name his ‘misleading’ sources, or will the hint from WaPo online chat prove out?

tic-toc….

reposting website for information and assistance:
http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/

This is from theLeftcoaster post by Steve Soto.

Both the Post and Newsweek refer to a late Friday Fitzgerald filing, whereas a May 5th court hearing transcript was also released last Friday as well, so there may be some confusion here that I will try and sort out as we go along today and tomorrow.

Hope its true but only time will tell.

More kickers than that. If you have applied for the “extra help” and got approved then decided not to sign up for it, they are signing you up automatically. They are also picking packages that are not the best for you when they do this.

Another kicker – once you are in with medicare-d and get the “extra help” other insurances you may have will drop you now.

Jamie
http://www.intoxination.net

That picture just makes me so sad.

We’re hanging in there with you, Christy and Jane – new servers will no doubt be worth the hassle, especially if events this week unfold anything like we hope they will.

This is partly OT, but related to the plight of seniors in this country: a diary I saw at dKos a week ago that’s been haunting me ever since. There are too many people like this woman, and we owe them so much more than a hand-to-mouth existence.

way, way OT: if the Preznit sends troops to the Mexican border ‘temporarily’, does he have an exit strategy? Just how temporary is temporary?

Also that picture link someone posted {I believe ME3} of a Rove lookalike crimminal was good. It reminded me of another person Rove looked like, John Wayne Gacy.

Since there was a delay in the rollout of the Medicare Drug Plan isn’t fair to extend the sign up period?

TANK — Democrats tried to do just that last week, and were rebuffed by Nancy Johnson and the GOP in the House. Who, btw, are now contemplating extending the deadline since Seniors in their districts are giving them an earful — AND trying to take credit for the idea, even though Dems have been trying to push through an extension and/or dropping the penalty altogether for months now. Asshats.

But..but..I had the real fitz, two in a row counting the next post. Oh well back to ranting:

THIS is the kind of issue that can finally bring down the Republicans. Earlier seniors were confused, now they are going to be angry. It can make a difference in states like Ohio.

And the very idea of a -penalty- is egregious. Charge old, sick people extra money if they can’t figure out your stupid program. Or if they get steered the wrong way by YOUR employees. Way to go Repubs.

Not the end of this rant!!! To be continued.

The way I read your post, Christy, is that those who don’t sign up AT ALL will have to pay this penalty? Is that what you mean?

This is rather urgent — I just spent two hours this morning explaining to a 70-something year old Japanese friend who was utterly panicked by the word “penalty” that she heard on TV (and on something she’d received from the pharmicist) and since to her that sounds like a sort of criminal liability, was utterly distraught. She spent a sleepless night over it.

I hate to think I’ve misinformed her if what I told her, that the ‘penalty’ would apply only if she signed up later, is not true.

Could you or someone let me know? Thanks.

Eli at 25 — the way I’ve read things, if they are covered by a current Medicare drug benefit, they have to sign up for a plan or face a penalty. But I am by no means an expert on this. The best resource is the DHHS website — but you have to know exactly what the current coverage is and everything. Sorry I can’t be more help on it — it’s been such a mess just trying to help a few family members through the maze. Maybe calling the 800 number with your neighbor would be helpful?

why try to cooperate with this insanity —

how about a good old-fashioned passive resistance — if nobody signed up, don’t you think the docs and pharmas and lobbyists would freak out and insist it really get fixed?

i know it sounds horribly ignorant to expect the elderly and sick to participate in such a move but it’s always been difficult and frightening and some time even lethal to resist your abuser.

whatever happened to the live free or die mentality we prided ourselves in?

buried and gone like king and gandhi and our jobs overseas and our votes down an electronic rathole?

P J Evans – I can commiserate with you. Before my mom died 3-1/2 years ago she was shuttled back and forth between the hospital and the senior rehabilitation center nearby. Because everytime there was a crisis with her kidneys or otherwise, medicare would only allow her to stay in one place for 21 days, or she (and we) would have to start paying out of pocket, thousands of dollars for medical services, dialysis three times a week, and physical therapy that was supposed to be provided on a regular basis, but wasn’t. It was a horrible, sad experience for us – watching her suffer, and then having to chase down the doctors and nurses and social services ombudsman who couldn’t have cared less about a 70 year old woman with kidney failure who was going to die anyway.

My advice: get yourself a good long-term care insurance plan now. (who knows what will be available to all of us when the time comes?)

I saw a news report last week where a doctor was talking about his patients who had signed up for the plan, and were not able to get the medications they needed because they weren’t the medications approved by the plan they chose. And the substitute drugs were ineffective treatment.

I love how Bush says “it’s all about giving seniors choice”, but if they don’t sign up, they get penalized. I really despise him more than I can say.

shoephone says:
May 15th, 2006 at 12:22 pm

Mom had long-term, and only needed real care for about two weeks. [Massively bad reaction to chemo, resulting in bloodclots and system failure. Fairly quick (but not painless: they were giving her morphine shots). She was conscious up to the last 24 hours.]

Christy at 26 — Thanks! So far I’m not finding any sign of penalty without-signing-up ever at the medicare.gov site. The Medicare phones are swamped and a recording lets you know up front that they’ll only deal with those who are actually signing up right then.

As for my friend, she’s never been on any Medicare drug program, just the regular coverage.

Eli #25 — Please do follow Christy’s advice and make sure, but it is my understanding that this is not a “penalty” like a fine. It’s a “penalty” as in if you sign up later you pay more. My 91 year old father is not signing up for Medicare D because he’s a retired federal employee, so his current benefits are better than any MedD plan being offered. It isn’t against the law to decline to participate, it’s just expensive to change your mind after the deadline.

In an earlier post now eaten by the server, I tried to explain that the (ostensible) purpose is to encourage relatively healthy seniors to sign up now rather than waiting until they know they will need lots of very expensive drugs. Of course, what has happened isn’t the appropriate use of dis-incentives to avoid adverse selection problems. Instead, it’s those most in need who are least able to navigate the maze and therefore are the most likely to face the “penalty” in the form of higher premiums when they finally figure things out.

Hi folks -

I’m a physician working half-time in a public clinic serving mental health patients – back in November the county had the Medicare dog and pony show for the docs in the program roll out.

The Medicare people stated that patients who signed up for Medicare Plan D (the health plan) would lose their existing medi-gap policies. In other words, signing up for the partial drug benefit on Medicare D will cause people to lose through drug benefits (for people with the medigap plans offering such thorough coverage).

The Medicare people also stated that – with the creation of Plan D – the previously available thorough medigap plans would not be available for seniors who joined Plan D but then wanted to go back to their previous medigap policies.

In other words, the Medicare people told the county that signing up for Plan D permanently blocks access to a patinet’s prior medigap plans. If you’ve signed up for Part D and don’t like it, you don’t have the option of going back on your Medigap plan.

And, as observed above, the Part D plans can drop previously covered meds, but you’re stuck with the Part D plan until the annual re-enrollment. If you do change your Part D plan, the new plan can promise to cover certain meds and – after sixty days – break that promise, too.

The insurers and bigPharma negotiated a plan that works for them. Too bad the seniors’ needs weren’t reperesented at the table.

One family’s solution is just that, but – FWIW – I’ve asked my parents to continue their medigap via AARP.

I’m not surprised private insurers are threatening to cancel medigap policies – the medigap policies require a higher level of benefit than do the plans offered though Medicare Part D.

As the private insurers – along with the big pharma – were the chief players at the table when the Part D plan was devised, the coverage they agreed to offer under Part D is more lucrative for them than the existing thorough medi-gap policies.

I wonder if the California Insurance Commissioner has had complaints form seniors whose medigap carriers are threatening cancellation in order to push seniors to buy the Part D plans.

Good luck with this nightmare, and thanks to Christy for reminding folks about the Part D deadline today.

{apologies for haste/typos/redundancy – typed durig a cancelled pt visit. One of our indigent patients was randomly assigned to a Medicare D plan with a premium of 2,500 monthly….]

Here are links to the Medicare Part D pages at Medicare:

The first two links are aimed at the same page ( the first link is generic, the second is optimized for moziila/firefox).

http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/Public/Home

http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/…..ntegrate=N

The page links 1 and 2 reach is designed to allow people to plug in:

location
medications
personal info

and receive a list of drug plans covering their meds in their area, along with comparison pricing for the plans.

[The plans can still drop coverage of your meds after you have been withthem for sixty days]

THe third link is to a specific page on the Medicare Part D site. This Page allows drug/plan selction without personal or geographic data.

Link is: http://plancompare.medicare.gov/drugselect.asp

Apologies if this was already covered – I don’t see it in comments,but am glancing between pt visits.

Good luck with this horrific system….

I don’t get why it is necessary to have a deadline at all.

With regard to the “penalty” question:

As Christy described, the “penalty” shows up in higher Medicare Part D premiums for those who sign-up for Medicare Part D after today.

No “penalty” is assesed against those who never sign up for Medicare Part D. SO for folks who keep their medi-gap insurance policies and never sign up with Part D, the penalty is not an issue.

[For folks earning under a very low income level ($14,000) or folks with severe mental health problems, the system may have more flexibility, but I think even these groups may be charged extra. Great - more money for the health insurance companies and big pharma from those withthe least.]

If the Congresspeople and Senators who knowingly designed this massive wealthtransfet to big pharma and the insurance/financial sectors ever seriously decide to improve public health, I suggest immediate organ donation would be appropriate atonement.

Unfortunately, their donations wouldn’t help cardiac patients. The COngressional authors of Medicare D are utterly heartless.

Fuck ‘em! I’m not signing up. I just can’t force myself to sign up and validate this bastard program. So far I’ve been lucky and my meds haven’t been stopped at the Canadian border so I’m OK. This bastard plan would actually cost me more money then I already spend.

Let the SOB’s penalize me. I’m no cowering idiot like so many Americans are today. Maybe if we seniors found our backbones and told the republicans where to put this plan they would reconsider it. PSHAW!

I don’t have any prescription coverage, but I’d rather take a chance of dying in the gutter rather than sign up for a “benefit” pushed through by Big Pharma and subject to arbitrary switcheroos by the vampires of Insurance Incorporated. The whole enterprise is extortion– the only question is wether the payoff is extorted from “clients” or taxpayers.

When will the public insist that we get an affordable rational civilized (”socialist”) health care system that absorbs a defensible percentage of the GNP and distributes it equably? The stress of negotiating our present hellish maze is probably the reason Americans at all levels are twice as sick as the English!

Christy, I’m sure all your readers appreciate that you only report on things you yourselves can confirm. I don’t think your readers come here to read the scoop so much as to see you and Jane and others sort it out.

Mostly you seem to be right on top of the curve, waiting for the confirmation to catch up.

Hey try the American way – have your secretary do it. I spent all day Friday working on this nightmare. I ended up going to Walgreens to get the pharmacist’s input – that really helped.

I’ve been working as a volunteer at my local senior service agency, helping seniors without access to the internet use the online plan finder. (I have a writeup on how to use it here.)

There are accounts in the news today that a group of Republican legislators are starting to seriously talk about waiving the penalty for this first year. They’re probably still going to enforce the deadline, so if you don’t get in today, your next chance will be open enrollment Nov 15-Dec 31, and your coverage would start on Jan, 2007.

People who turn 65 during the year have an enrollment period of 3 months before and after the month they turn 65. The deadline is also waived for people qualifying for “extra help”, and for people who have equivalent or better coverage (”creditable coverage”) under some other medical plan.

Gee, why not just kill everyone over 65 and confiscate their property?
Just one more reason why the ReTHUGlicans need to be voted out.