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Take Two Aspirin and Read This Now
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Feb 03, 2006 12:54am |
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| Category | General |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Monday, January 30, 2006 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Is the new Medicare drug mess a bureaucratic hiccup or the sign of a cost-conscious future? TIME takes a look
By JYOTI THOTTAM
Jan. 30, 2006
A month ago, Tracy Patterson was simply a woman with more than her fair share of sickness. With multiple birth defects, chronic pain, asthma and bipolar disorder, Patterson, 35, struggled to get by on $832 a month in disability assistance. But at least one thing in her life was taken care of. California's Medicaid program paid for more than a dozen medications every month. "I always got my meds on time," she says. That changed on Jan. 1, when Medicare's prescription-drug benefit went into effect. Patterson was one of 6.2 million people automatically shifted into the program from Medicaid, and her story has become part of an urgent, nationwide call to fix what both Republicans and Democrats say was a botched transition to the controversial new plan.
Patterson says the abrupt switch has pushed her to the edge. She spent a week without medication, trying to figure out the new plan, called Medicare Part D, and then learned that under the terms of her policy, she would have to pay $308.68 for a month's supply of morphine, which she takes for her chronic pain.
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Any policymakers who once might have glossed over her frustration as a side effect of sudden change are thinking twice. "Katrina showed government's failure to respond, and we can't afford those failures again," says Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. A quarter of the 24 million people now enrolled in Medicare Part D are "dual eligibles," people who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare. In other words, they are among the poorest and frailest people in the country. |
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