Medicare Part D! Uuuuugggghhhh!
I am going to part from my normal rant about how our Republican controlled government and Mr. Bush is slowly killing the middle class to say that the new Medicare Part D (Drug Plan) is the biggest, fuck up of all time. It is a total fucking nightmare for me, my patients and everyone involved. I spent an hour and a half on the damn phone today just to try and get 1 patients prescriptions to go through. This was a Medicaid patient who the government was supposed to automatically sign up for a Medicare plan. Well guess what now her medicaid is cut off and she has no drug coverage at all and somehow has to come up with $376 dollars for just half of her presciptions. Finally after I told her that she had no coverage, she spent well over an hour on hold with Medicare just to find out the same thing. I want to thank every politician that voted for these horribly run plans. You may think that the government is to blame for this mess, but if the government was the one administering this plan I am sure it would not only cost the tax payers about half as much as it will now but I would not have had the awful day that I just had. There are over 100 different private companies all running multiple medicare rx drug plans, no that's not a recipe for disaster. My elderly patients have no idea who they are signed up with all they know is their elected officials told them they would have coverage today. I want to say FUCK EVERY POLITICIAN that voted for this nightmare. I never thought I would say this but, I wish after today that everyone in America would get their rx's filled in Canada. It's cheaper and their is only like a 10% chance of getting counterfeit drugs, at least you will have meds which is more than I can say for my customers today.
(Sorry for all the vulgarity but at least now I feel a little better that is until I go to work tomorrow)
posted by ROMA @ 12:04:00 AM
2 Comments:
I am soooooo glad I wasn't at Martin's on January 2 when this nightmare struck. My own grandfather has no idea what plan he has, where he can get his meds, etc - and his granddaughter is a pharmacy student and he is very involved at the Senior Center, who actually signed him up for the plan.
I knew this was going to be a screw up from the beginning. Let's see - a government designed program run by a bunch of privatized companies...if that doesn't sound like a clusterfuck, I don't know what does. Not only did seniors have to wade through copays, monthly premiums, and literature that even health care professionals don't understand, they then had to find a plan that they could use at their pharmacy and that covered their drugs. It is my experience that no such plan exists. A senior citizen might find a plan that covers the MAJORITY of their drugs, but certainly not all of them. Then we start compromising doctor's treatment plans because the patient can't get the medicine. Take a patient from my Coumadin clinic as an example - she's been stable on diltiazem 360mg for 2 years. Her drug plan that she signed up for will not pay for generic diltiazem (wtf??) but will pay for diltiazem CD, manufactured by another company. Sounds like her prescription plan has its hands in the pockets of the manufaturers of diltiazem CD. How cozy... So now we compromise her treatment because of insider deals. If that's not unethical, I don't know what is.
Finally, senior citizens aren't the only victims of Medicare Plan D. Pharmacies, especially independent pharmacies, are huge victims. Congress has cut reimbursement for pharmacists through these plans. This is nothing new - we lost money every day on Medicaid prescriptions when I worked at Martin's. The unfortunate onslaught of this is that the uninsured individual makes up this slack. (I know - I'm one of these individuals) So, now we penalize the individual who really needs the price break. For independent pharmacists, Medicare Part D could be the end of independent pharmac as we know it. Reimbursement through these plans can take at least 6 weeks to be issued to the pharmacy. This isn't a big deal for Wal-Mart, which has deep pockets, but for the Ma&Pa drug store down the road, this is a huge problem. How do you maintain your inventory if you don't have the funds to purchase it?
At the end of the day Medicare Part D is a half-assed solution to a ever growing problem. And that, my friend, is something you can thank Mr. Bush and his Republican Congress for. This is what happens when you have non-health professionals making health care decisions.
It has gotten a little better now that I have adopted the attitude that "if you do not bring me the correct info then you have to call your provider and get it yourself."
I have taken a stand--
I AM NOT AN INSURANCE AGENT!!
If you have a therapy related question I will answer it otherwise call your insurance company.
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