Thank You Democrats

It has been nearly a year since I have posted a rant to this blog. I have decided to post a sincere thank you.

I want to thank all of you liberal Democrats for your efforts on behalf of all of we American seniors who have dropped below the poverty line. Using myself as an example, and I am one of those working people who for their entire working life paid the maximum into Social Security and Medicare. I was moved below the poverty line by the huge medical expenses of my late wife’s final illness not covered by insurance.

What prompted this email message was a recent headline “U. S. Deficit will cause government to pull back on senior benefits.” That’s certainly nothing new. It’s been going on for at least the last fifty years and especially since 1993. Another thing that prompted this rant was the incident about my Rx costs.

I take several medications since my heart attack and heart surgery. One of those, Effient, an Eli Lilly product, cost me just $6.25 per Rx all of last year. The first time I went to pick it up this year the price was $129 for the same Rx. I didn’t have enough money to pay for it. When I contacted the SS office I was informed that my “Extra help” had expired and I would have to reapply. I went to the SS office and waited four hours to see a lady who helped me fill out a new application. When she told me it would take three or four weeks for my application to be processed I asked her how I was to pay for these critical meds during that period she informed me politely that I would have to pay for them. Then she made a suggestion that I ask my cardiologist for some samples to use until they processed my papers. That was the best thing she did.

What a blessing it was. My cardiologist gave me a month supply of samples. I also found out that unlike most major drug companies, Eli Lilly does not provide even temporary help on the cost of their drugs for poor seniors. When I went to pick up my next Rx of Effient, the price was $6.25. Recently, when I went to pick up a new Rx for Effient, the price was back up to $129. My druggist told me to call my insurance company to find out why. I called them and was told to call Social Security. I called SS and they told me I had to call the Medicare office. Medicare said I would have to call the State Medicaid office. I called them and they said they could find no reason why the price went up, but that I should file another request for Extra Help. Other than the call to my insurance company, each of the calls to government agencies took several days of constant calling at all hours and hearing, “We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. Please try your call later.” I could not get through to anyone, so I gave up trying and went on the Internet and reapplied once more. Of course by this time I had been without the critical heart medication for nearly two weeks. I finally called my cardiologist and explained the situation. Once more he very kindly supplied me with another month supply of samples.

Now I am waiting for notification that my application for Extra Help is being processed. That will probably take at least a month if all goes well. I hope it comes through before I run out of the samples.

Oh yes, thanks again for the wonderful reductions in Medicare benefits. Visits to my family doctor that cost $17 just four years ago now cost me about $90. One hospital x-ray and tests for my spine that I have periodically were free four years ago. Now they cost me about $60. Well of course, we have to find the money to pay for all those hard-working Obamacare bureaucrats somehow. That now falls on those least able to pay, seniors with low or no income. As Obama said about seniors in their eighties (paraphrased), "Take a Tylenol for pain. Your too old for expensive medical treatment like knee replacement or a pacemaker."

That Democrats have gutted SS payments big time while shouting, “Seniors, Republicans want to cut your SS payments. We will protect your Social Security.” In 1993 Democrats in control of Congress made some huge cuts in future SS payments and Democrat President Bill Clinton signed these changes into law. What they did was to change the way the Cost of Living Adjustment, the COLA, was calculated. They removed food and fuel from the calculation of the COLA. Apparently they think seniors do not need food or fuel. My current SS monthly payment is $1250.10, an amount lower than what I have been receiving since March 2013. If Democrats had not made those cuts, my current monthly SS payment would be $2,575.81. The same reduction has been proportionally made to all recipients of SS payments. Thank you Democrats.

You would think the public advocates in the media would be screaming about this legislation that so damages seniors, but since they are firmly in the pockets of Democrats, the media never mentions it. In fact, they do their best to hide it from the public while screaming, “Republicans are planning to cut your Social Security.” That’s what Democrats have already done, gutted Social Security for seniors. Most seniors are either too ill-informed or stupid to understand that.

The VA has been in the news recently for the atrocious way they have been handling health care for veterans. This is nothing new, In the late 1960s and early nineteen seventies. There was a very similar scandal in the VA system where several veterans died awaiting treatment that never came.. I know because at that time we were supplying goods and services by bid to the VA hospital on Brecksville Road in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Ohio. I personally went to the VA Hospital dental clinic to service some of their equipment. The red tape we had to go through to do any work was unbelievably tedious. We had to examine the equipment and then submit a bid for the repairs. That meant two trips for one of our servicemen. As a result, most repairs were bid and then billed at twice our usual rate. Any new problems the dentists pointed out to our men while they were there had to go through the same bid procedure. We tried to work out a system where we bid two hours without knowing what the problem was, but then there was the problem of parts. It also took the VA at least 90 days to process any payments after they were billed.

We doubled our bid prices and included estimates of parts. Even then we were awarded most of our bids for repair service. Another problem was access. Our men often waited an hour or more to gain access to the clinic, even when we had an appointment. Then they had to wait for someone to sign off on the work order, sometimes wasting another hour or more. Actually, I looked at what we were doing and found the delays, paperwork and red tape were costing us more than the actual work. This brought about another increase in our bid prices for repairs. After a few particularly aggravating (and expensive) episodes, I quit biding on repair service. The dentist finally called and begged us to bid on repairs since no one else would.  I worked out a system that basically bypassed the red tape and worked well for everyone without all the aggravation. Within a month of putting the system in place I got a call from one of their bureaucrats who accused me of cooking up a “sweetheart” deal for us. I tried to explain why and show that it worked well for both the hospital and us, but he would not listen. I finally told him we would no longer perform any repair service for them at any price. In spite of the begging of the dentist we refused to bid. The VA finally hired a full time dental repair man (from our competitor). We continued bidding and getting contracts on parts and supplies.

I checked our total billings for service labor. It had averaged about $2,000 for the previous three years and probably would have been lower under the last system I worked out. We set the dentist up in private practice as soon as his contract with the VA was over. He told me what a mess their practice was at the hospital and how the dental repair man, who was paid about $17.000 per year, spent most of his time reading books and watching TV in the break room. They still had to issue a work order and get it approved for any repairs their own man did. That was more than fifty years ago and it looks as if nothing has changed since. I can just imagine what a bureaucratic nightmare our healthcare system will become under Obamacare. There will probably be more bureaucrats hired to check on other bureaucrats than there will be workers. Of course, that will mean more bureaucrats paid to do less work and the rolls of government workers will swell accordingly. Since they will be voting to keep their jobs they will  overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Isn’t that the whole purpose of the government bureaucracy, to provide jobs for Democrat voters who are unable to or don’t want to work anyway? And all of that featherbedding paid for by workers in the shrinking private sector.

These are all facts I have experienced or have calculated from Federal Government records. Of course, like all good liberals, you will probably adhere to the liberal mantra, “Don’t try to confuse me with facts. My mind’s made up.”