Robert Pear | Washington | January 31
NYT – The Bush administration has touched off a furious debate with new rules allowing employers to collect billions of dollars in federal subsidies for prescription drug benefits less generous than what many retirees were expecting under the new Medicare law.
In theory, those retiree benefits should be at least equal in value to the new Medicare drug benefit. But that will not always be the case, according to Medicare officials, labor unions and specialists in employee benefits.
Do we have to bend over?
it says that while employers get to deduct the full cost of providing the benefit, recipients recieve half or less of the coverage they would recieve under medicare if they did not recieve the coverage from their employer. It ammounts to a deduction for employers while the balance is unnecessarily paid by the recipient. Truth must begin to be a paramount concept in acessing political moral values. When something costs more out of pocket than without it, I can’t honestly say that is a benefit. Creative deceptive language used to promote programs or legislation with effects that do not reflect the advertised result are very simply LIES.
of how the profit motive model does not belong in medicine, how it simply does not and never will work that well. Because one side is not a “free” market: you’re not really “free” to make wise financial decisions when you are dependent upon corporations for the medicine you might need to live. Ya sure, some companies care about keeping their employees healthy, and others care about other things, like cutting costs, in this case, getting involved in what medicine you get.
(With the basic necessities of current life, i.e., police, roads, utilities, health, there really is no better alternative to having government involved, faulty as it may be. ‘Freepers’ are ridiculous on this point. Most people get it: it’s why people banded together in communities and made governments in the first place. Why, it’s none other than: civilization! Most ‘free market” solutions just seem to mess it up worse.)
NATIONAL | February 2, 2005
Health Secretary Calls for Medicaid Changes
By ROBERT PEAR (NYT) News
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/national/02health.html
NATIONAL | February 2, 2005
Dispute Over Medicare Plan to Cover Erectile Treatments
By ROBERT PEAR (NYT) News
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/national/02viagra.html
BUSINESS | February 2, 2005
Study Ties Bankruptcy to Medical Bills
By REED ABELSON (NYT) News
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/business/02insure.html
Chart: Getting Sick, Going Broke
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/02/01/business/insure.gif
…some of the spokesmen went off half-cocked.