I'm On a Soapbox (Let Me Vent)

There is no logic to Dementia or Alzheimer's. There is no consistency and so far there is no solution. There is no cure. There is little hope. At best, there are a myriad of drugs that can slow its progression but most of them are extremely expensive and many are slow to get approval by the FDA. Worse yet, most of them aren’t capable of making a drastic difference, they simply slow things down a little. Alzheimer’s is insidious beyond belief.
Recent changes to Medicare Prescription Plans have made a great many of these types of medications ineligible for coverage. Others are so ridiculously priced to begin with that the portion you are left paying out-of-pocket (for a 30 day supply) costs more than what an average family spends on groceries for a week. Dad has a monthly injection I give him that is $1485 PER SHOT! With his old insurance, his co-pay was $50 a month. With the new Medicare Plan his co-pay is currently $791.

Introducing Medicare Part D otherwise referred to as Donut Hole Insurance. There are 4 stages to this nightmare insurance policy brought to you by the US Government (via a letter Dad received a few days ago)…
Stage 1- Yearly Deductible is around $300 (we had that met by the 2nd week of Jan.) Stage 2- Initial Coverage the plan covers part of the cost and you cover the rest (in our case they cover about 35%) until you reach app. $3,000 year-to-date “total drug costs” (we’re over ½ way there). Stage 3 Coverage Gap (which I estimate we will enter within the next 4 weeks)- You will receive a discount on brand name drugs and you pay ONLY 93% of the costs on generic drugs. You stay in this stage until the amount of year-to-date “out-of-pocket costs” reaches app $5,000. At this rate it shouldn’t take us very long to move to Stage 4- Catastrophic Coverage. During this payment stage, the plan pays most of the cost for your covered drugs. You generally stay in this stage for the rest of the plan year.
***Please note the ambiguous wording given by them. Phone calls are even more frustrating because everyone insists this is the best solution for someone who takes as many different medications as Dad does. Currently, he takes 29 different medications orally and 2 different types of injections at home.

How exactly does the government expect to prolong the lives of the elderly when they allow the pharmaceutical companies to pillage, rape and plunder the American people? How do they expect the elderly to pay their rent or mortgages, buy groceries, while paying outrageous costs for medical care and prescription medications? How can they hold their heads up knowing that there is no such thing as a decent government run nursing home in this country (and if there is, I stand corrected and am amazed)? How can they close their eyes to the injustices, neglect and abuse that the American elderly are subjected to without punishing the offenders to the highest letter the law will allow? I often wonder what these people do with the elderly in their own lives (parents, grandparents, etc.)

If I were an elected official, I would bend over backward for this dwindling segment of the population. I would bust my ass to keep them alive as long as possible. You see, unlike subsequent generations, the elderly still have faith in the government. They always pay their taxes, they don’t ever cheat the government, the elderly go out of their way to follow the very letter of the law. They have unwavering devotion to our country and yet most government offices seem to relegate them to the back burner in every case. You get better health care assistance if you are a crack addict with 5 kids living in the projects and selling sex for hire than you do if you are elderly.

It infuriates me to see the way so many Americans treat the elderly, when they aren’t ignoring them entirely. Our nursing homes are more often than not substandard and the funding is so sparse (no matter who it’s run by) that there is a shortage of both Registered Nurses and LPNs (the ones there are, are overworked and usually underpaid), a shortage of doctors who give a damn, a shortage of Caregivers that have more than the minimum qualifications. I can’t think of a single country in the WORLD that treats the elderly so poorly!

I am angry and I am going to keep making it my business to demand answers from the medical people we encounter regularly, our insurance companies, Medicare, Social Security, the Federal Government in general.
I am going to continue to fight a government that allows crimes against the elderly go unpunished. A system that will allow someone to neglect or abuse an elderly person and then let them open a business that provides elderly care is a system that needs to change. I am only one small voice but I will S-C-R-E-A-M to be heard!