From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

In health care circles, Monday is Doughnut Hole Day, the deceptively storybook name for a nasty plot turn in the drama of getting prescriptions filled when you’re over 65 and living close to the bone. The hole is the gap in coverage built into Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program, which pays [...]

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Jacob Goldstein at the Wall Street Journal Health Blog reported Friday:
It was dueling reports yesterday on Capitol Hill, as Democrats argued that Medicare is paying way too much for prescription drugs and Republicans countered that the spending is on target.
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee and a longtime critic of the Medicare Part [...]

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We all know — or should know — by now that the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Medicare Part D) was crafted with the needs and convenience of Big Pharma, rather than patients, in mind. That’s why it’s so unwieldy for the consumer.
The worst part about Medicare Part D is the so-called “doughnut hole,” described [...]

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Drug addicts talk about having to “hit bottom” before they finally realize they have to do something about their problem. Are we about to see the U.S. healthcare system hit bottom?
Today, UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, cut its earnings forecast and said it would slash 4,000 jobs. Bloomberg reports:
In [...]

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Vicki Gottlich, an attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy, described some of the disturbing consequences of Medicare’s mind-numbing Part D prescription drug plan in a story by Ruth Mantell of Marketwatch:
The program’s complexities affect the ability of beneficiaries to understand the program, choose plans, pay premiums, benefit appropriately from the low-income subsidy, and utilize [...]

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A new study says allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices would save $20 billion per year.
Well, it ain’t gonna happen, after Big Pharma put its bought-and-paid-for politicians to work last week to stop proposed legislation. Here’s a nice analysis showing, point by point, how the bill’s opponents distorted the facts in their campaign [...]

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On April 1, CBS will air a “60 Minutes” expose on the impact of the drug lobby on Congress. CBS spoke with Congressmen Walter Jones, Dan Burton and others about the legislative session that voted the Medicare prescription drug bill into law. An excerpt:
“I’ve been in politics for 22 years and it was [...]

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The Schwitzer health news blog points out:
A study in Health Affairs shows that more than half of the nation’s uninsured are ineligible for public programs such as Medicaid but do not have enough resources to purchase coverage themselves.
In a Health Affairs news release, lead author Lisa Dubay, now a research scientist at the Johns [...]

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From a Mother Jones interview with Ohio senator-elect Sherrod Brown:
MJ: What do you want to do on the Health and Education Committee?
SB: FDA reform — wrestling the agency away from drug company influence. In my 14 years in the House, I’ve seen a very good agency, the Food and Drug administration — one of the [...]

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Ezra Klein has a great post explaining why drugs purchased through the Veterans Administration are cheaper than those purchased by Medicare patients. He concludes with these eye-opening facts:
in 2003, The New England Journal of Medicine found the “socialized” VA better on all 11 metrics of care than fee-for-service Medicare …The National Committee for Quality Assurance, [...]

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