Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Medicaid, Medicare & the Bush Administration

DownWithTyranny has posted an article on the new Medicare prescription drug “benefit”, that reflects my feelings.

My mom is 78 years old, and is getting bombarded with surveys and other propoganda regarding the new Medicaid/Medicare changes. I call it propogana, because it really can’t be called information. I mean ultimately, regardless how overwhelming, information should be useful. Good information should enable you to make informed decisions. But this trash, is really useless.

The surveys ask questions on do you want to take control of your Medicaid expenses?? Reading through the survey seems to imply, that if the government gives you a lump sum payment of your Medicaid benefits, that you could end up saving some of that money and use it for food or movies.  Right!! But the ridiculousness of it, is that they keep sending all this trash to my 78 year old mother. Now I know some 80 year olds are sharp as a whip, and my mom has her moments. But when I can’t make heads or tales of the information; how can they expect her to.

Not to mention, my mom comes from a generation of people who believe print doesn’t lie. Despite the fact that she reads the Star and the Examiner, and decades of her children telling her that the articles aren’t true. She’ll still say, “I read it.” It’s her great summation. Her last bastion of things she knows to be true. The written word, is news, and news is true and accurate, and can be trusted. It’s a value from multi-generations ago; and was probably not that accurate then, but is so far from accurate now, you’d need the entire northern hemisphere to lay down a marker.

Since, I can’t make heads or tails of the information, I admit to doing nothing. I’ve completed the surveys, basically taking the approach of no, I don’t want a change. So take that!

“Would you like to be able to use the savings from Medicaid benefits for personal use?”

NO!

“Do you want to be able to hire and fire your Medicaid benefits manager?”

No. No! No!!! NO!!!!

I don’t even want to know their name. I don’t know it now, and don’t feel like all the extra work—time, energy, and effort, to possible save $10 a year or end up costing myself $1,000 a year in extra expenses is worth being introduced to currently anonymous Medicaid Benefit Manager.

What utter dribble. Why take a program that only requires annual verification of qualifications from the elderly, and occasional decisions (and this still requiring assistance of sons, daughters, or care workers); then make it to a program where the elderly are suppose to control every level of decision—from hiring and firing to signing up for plans, extra, extra. Because that’s what you need at age 80, “to make more decisions you don’t understand.”

I hate the Bush Administration.

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Categories: Personal •
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Permalink: http://www.wide-eyed.org/main/article/medicaid_medicare_the_bush_administration/

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