esrosedotblog

HOOPS

Good news/Bad news on the Medicare Rx front today.

Good is that my card worked. I am in the system.

Bad, or not so bad really, is that they denied my Allegra, the expensive allergy med, and left a note to try Clariton OTC.

Now I understand this. In fact, they might be right in the cosmic sense. After all, the Allegra costs almost two dollars a day and Clariton is less than half that and, better for them, I pay for it!

Voila!

I can deal with this.

As Lisa pointed out (she's in nursing) there are far more serious issues being faced by people a lot less able to cope or afford it.

Perspective.

So, I am up for trying Clariton. I am even up for trying to do without the pill at all to see what happens. In either case, I am not going to suffer so much.

I said to my pal David, the druggist, that I guessed they were going to make us jump through some hoops for the cheap coverage. There are no bargains.

He said that professional ethics prevented him from giving an opinion on that in the store but, if he was outside with his name tag off, he might agree with me. Add a smirk.

The general situation is another scandal. David said that they are getting errors or no contact on every other submission. That is 50% problem cases. Their work is piled up—stacked, I could see it—waiting for people to come in with the right info and a card that will work.

If the bushers spent half the energy governing that they do in covering things up and playing power games, this would be less of a mess. There would be a mess, no doubt, but we would be on our way to solving it in the foreseeable future. That is not now the case.

It is interesting to read this Robert Novak column in which the political ramifications are revealed.

Medicare Rx Blunder May Hurt GOP

Evidently the impetus behind this was to gain an edge with the elderly voter.

Talk about your 'unintended consequences'!

Blowback big time.