The new Medicare drug benefit plan for seniors is up and running. Apparently there are numerous choices and seniors are already getting confused . Now, I understand that seniors are paying lots of money for drugs, but then again, their payments now go into the massive R&D costs for future medicines. Also, the FDA prohibits them from buying drugs from Canada, Europe, and other locations where they are much cheaper (most likely due to a lack of lawsuits in those countries against pharmaceutical companies).
Medicare shouldn't exist in the first place, its a socialized, inefficient, government run health care program. It takes thousands of dollars out of your paycheck every year, and people under the age of 40 most likely won't see any benefits from it.
This drug plan has an estimated cost of around $1.2T, that's $1,200,000,000,000. This is a huge entitlement, the likes of which have never been seen before in the land of the free. We are becoming more French every day.
Another unintended consequence of this spending is that it may prolong the life of some seniors, causing a quicker end to Social Security and possibly wrecking the retirements of people aged 40-55.
We can only hope that with all the choices available, seniors will be so confused they won't sign up for the plan at all... although in that case we would probably spend even more money educating them about it.
4 comments:
Good point. I'll probably never get any Medicare benefits myself but yet I have to pay it. Good ol' USA! This country needs to work out a better plan for Medicare.
yeah, according to a conference i attended in august, drug companies spent around $400 million doing research. as for seniors, yeah, they're all old and confused. i don't know how our generation's going to handle them; my parents are enough! :-)
oops forgot to clarify - last year, that's how much they spent
Well, that's what voting Republican gets you.... socialism.
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