Bush the Incompetent

Bush the Incompetent By Harold Meyerson

A more appropriate title there cannot be! There are so many reasons to want to read this article just because of the title, but the main one is Medicare.

Initially, Part D’s biggest glitch seemed to be the difficulty that seniors encountered in selecting a plan. But since Part D took effect on Jan. 1, the most acute problem has been the plan’s failure to cover the 6.2 million low-income seniors whose medications had been covered by Medicaid. On New Year’s Day, the new law shifted these people’s coverage to private insurers. And all hell broke loose.

Pharmacists found that the insurers didn’t have the seniors’ names in their systems, or charged them far in excess of what the new law stipulated — and what the seniors could afford. In California fully 20 percent of the state’s 1.1 million elderly Medicaid recipients had their coverage denied. The state had to step in to pick up the tab for their medications. California has appropriated $150 million for the medications, and estimates that it will be out of pocket more than $900 million by 2008-09. Before Jan. 1 the Bush administration had told California that it would save roughly $120 million a year once Part D was in effect

Pre-November 2004:”Yes, seniors, we will bring you brand new, better prescription drug coverage. Will you vote for us?”

Post-January 2005: “Thanks so much for your vote. Now go fuck yourselves and don’t forget to hurry up and die– Oh! And thanks, insurance companies, for your big fat contributions!”

I’ve told DH that we’d better die before we get so old that we need Medicare, otherwise we’re just going to get screwed. Too bad our own grandparents are already getting it straight up the you-know-where. Can you imagine, you’re already rationing your heart meds and your diabetes meds and go to pick up what you thought you could afford only to find out you are no longer covered by anyone? Astounding.

Of course, BushCo doesn’t have to worry about their medical needs. They get the best and brightest medical professions at our expense- and at the expense of the seniors they’re shafting. When will the hypocrisy end? When will it get to be too much for even the most adamant Bush-ass-kisser?

For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.

There is no understanding King George. Not unless you’re a silver-spoon-Harvard-Yalie-secret-society kind of guy. Some would say that it’s all part of the plan. I say it’s simply greed and cronyism. How can anyone be shocked by this?

But I do love this part:

But, financially beholden to both the drug and insurance industries, the Bush administration and the Repsublican Congress mandated that millions of Americans have their coverage shifted to these most byzantine of bureaucracies.

Do you think that was a typo?

LOL! Me neither.

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