Tough choices can be side effects of Medicare plan
“The people who need this the most can fight the least,” says Victoria D’Angelo of Denver, a former legal secretary now living on Social Security disability payments while battling bipolar disorder, asthma, high blood pressure and other ailments. “We don’t have the strength. We don’t have the mental ability.”
Before Medicare, 6.4 million of them had drug coverage through medicaid. Others had state help or free drugs from drug companies. “They had good coverage before this program began,” says Ron Pollack of Families USA, a liberal health care advocacy group. Now, “there’s a sizeable group that is actually worse off.”
Medicare Administrator Mark McClellan has urged others to join them, “so beneficiaries can have the Medicare program and the assistance programs.”
In Lafayette, La., Dorothy Broussard, 58, went a week in February without her arthritis and multiple sclerosis drugs because she was in the “doughnut hole.” Her prescriptions came to about $1,400 per month. “I almost passed out in the pharmacy.”
Read more on this topic.