Medicare Drug Plan Leaves Out Supplies

LATimes

The benefit covers home IV medication but not the implements and care needed to administer it.

Essentially, the prescription program allows coverage of the drugs but does not pay for the medical supplies and nursing help needed for the home infusion treatments to be safe and effective - a policy that effectively shuts down such treatment for some patients, even though it is substantially cheaper than the alternatives. Two GOP senators warned the Medicare agency last fall that the gap in coverage "may limit access to home infusion therapy."

"I truly feel that if the president, the governor and all the legislators had to stand in line and wait for their prescriptions and find out they weren't covered, they would make some major changes," Bryson said. "Unfortunately, it's the small person who does not have pull, and they have to beg for their medicine."

"The proof that it isn't sensible is that commercial insurance companies and health maintenance organizations don't do it this way," said Ratner, who is also the medical director for a private company that provides support services for patients receiving intravenous treatments at home.

Saving money by making hospitalization unnecessary was part of the rationale for creating the Medicare prescription benefit, which has an estimated price tag of $700 billion over 10 years. But the most far-reaching Medicare change in a generation failed to adequately provide for this kind of at-home drug therapy, critics say.

But congressional leaders are loath to make any legislative changes to the drug benefit, fearing that political support for the plan could unravel.

That figures. Political cowardice and expediency helped get us into this mess, and now it's keeping us from getting out of it. They don't care that people may die: sick people are overhead anyway. If they were profit generators and campaign contributors, the pols'd be all over this like a cheap suit.

I think the Medicare drug scam can now add stupidity and incompetence to administration lies and Big Pharma profiteering.