[promoted by BooMan]
At midnight, the enrollment period for Part D will end. Those who sign up later will have to pay a lifetime penalty. The description of which has not been specified on the medicare.gov website, as an example has been used instead.
Today, Michaeal Leavitt is quoted as saying,
“They needed that deadline or they wouldn’t sign up. In fact, the actuary for the government told us if we didn’t have a deadline, 1.6 million people fewer would actually sign up.”
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending the deadline through December would bring in 1 million more enrollees. But the government would forfeit $100 million in late fees this year, which would grow to $3.4 billion over 10 years.
Is that the real reason for not extending the enrollment period, despite repeated requests by the citizens/voters of this country to do so?
MLW
and available in Orange
make the people pay for that juicy corporate welfare.
Fuckers.
I know exactly what you mean. I am furious!!!
Follow the money, fuck the little people.
And I’m sick to read that Nancy Pelosi told caucus that if Dems capture the House in the mid-terms, there’ll be no impeaching Bush.
Gives truth to the perception RepubCrats.
I just lost any respect I had for her. That bitch!
Hi Kid. If this so called ‘Plan’ was a viable and decent plan people would be signing up like crazy. It seems pretty obvious(well to some of us anyway)that a ‘plan’ that you are forced into can’t be all that good now can it.
This deadline obsession by the government would seem to point up that fact something stinks here. I see no reason why people shouldn’t be able to take their time signing up except for the ‘follow the money’ clause-where they make money on these asinine penalties.
You know not only is the whole goddamn mess a shitty deal it’s extremely stressful. Before I got my prescriptions through Medi-Cal. I went to the drugstore and got my prescriptions, no charge and that was it. Now every month I wonder if they(the Plan I’m in) will have dropped any drug plus I have to pay one to 5 dollars a prescription. Not only that now I get crap from that insurance company all time relating to my ‘plan’ and as usual it’s always written in mostly insurance speak meaning half the fucken time I don’t know what they mean…which is stressful. Just all one big freaken headache.
chocolate ink, I know exactly what you mean. I wonder all the time as well.
Some of the info at this site may be able to help you out.
http://www.medicarerights.org/
Thing is that there are others in worse shape than we are. Give it a shot. If we don’t speak up for ourselves, no one will.
Hey there my coffee drinking friend..thanks for that link. I really worry about all those people who are out there who are very sick/disabled and are not able to function or are alert enough mentally to wade through all this garbage. Or as has been mentioned people in nursing homes, etc who don’t have relatives to help them out or the staff is either understaffed or not their job to help them either or they simply won’t.
I am so glad that that link is useful to you.
And there is a lot more that needs to be done. Could you send BooMan an email and ask him to forward it to me? As I mentioned in earlier diaries, I think of the two of us as a team. And I am writing something else now that I could really use some of your help with.
Thanks,
Terri
Prescription Drug..was just a insurance give away..why penalize those who didn’t sign up..in the same week Congress gives 70 Billion in tax break..which most goes to tax breaks in capital gains.
“But the government would forfeit $100 million in late fees this year, which would grow to $3.4 billion over 10 years.”
Of course it’s the reason behind the deadline – I think we discussed this possibility before, Kid, but at the time neither one of us knew if the penalty dollars would go to the insurance companies or the government. Now we know – $3.4 BILLION being siphoned out of the pockets of the elderly who can least afford it into the black hole that Washington has become. SHEESH… Thanks for continuing to hand us ammunition for letters to the editor and our congress critters.
Thanks for writing them, in addition to everything else you do.
have yet uncovered all the nifty ways this seminal population reduction program makes money for the intended corporate benificiaries.
But I am confident that you will. Thanks again for your efforts at documenting the various details and minutiae of a program that will have a very important place in the history books.
There is so much…Like you said, I haven’t even started…
That really is the scary part isn’t it..we have no idea yet what all was written into that huge bill..wasn’t it 500 or more pages. I just shudder to think what else is in it. About the only thing we can be sure of is that it won’t be much benefit to anyone but the insurers and the drug companies.
And we are the ones who have the skills to make a difference about this. As I said upthread, send an email to BooMan and ask him to forward it to me.