I'm surprised there hasn't been more attention in liberal blogdom of a huge story, one with massive human costs and an incalculable political effect. A slow-moving catastrophe that is putting thousands of lives at risk, while also putting the GOP Congress at similar risk. Daily Kos, in particular, has been eerily silent on an issue that, in its own way, is like Katrina ... well, only less wet and without all the wind. But it's a story of GOP cronyism, corruption, and malfeasance putting many, many lives at risk.
I'm speaking, of course, of Medicare Part D. There's been a few mentions of it on blogs, but not that much, and virtually nothing very little prominent discussion recently on the Orange Mothership here at dKos. Considering the importance of the story, we're mostly missing the boat. As this boat, my friends ... she be sinking.
First off, here's a story from
Tom Raum of the AP:
The Medicare drug program that was supposed to win political points for Republicans has exploded in their faces as this election year has begun. It's a particularly vexing problem for the GOP, since older Americans are such active voters and no one seeking office wants to see them angry.
Since the Bush administration's prescription medicine program began on Jan. 1, tens of thousands of elderly people have been unable to get medicines promised by the government. Some 20 states have had to jump in to help them.
{snip}
'The political fallout is potentially enormous,'' said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. ''This is a program that touches tens of millions of people. And anytime that a government program is working poorly, and is affecting adversely so many people, it's bound to have huge consequences.''
Yeah. I'll say. Newspapers around the country have leads like this one in the Seattle Times:
After five years of getting her prescriptions filled for no charge at her local pharmacy in Maple Valley, Estella Easterly, 84, says she recently was told she had to pay full price -- or go without.
She couldn't prove that she had enrolled in one of Medicare's new Part D drug plans. Her insurance company hadn't sent her a membership card yet, and it set up her eligibility information improperly in the computer system. So Easterly -- who lives on about $600 a month -- paid what she could: $24 for a half-month's worth of one of her medications.
"I'm not one that cries very easily," said Easterly, a widow who used to get her drugs paid for by the government because of her low income. "If I can't get it straightened out, I'll just have to do without my medicines. I just can't afford that every month."
And this story crosses lines out of news into many other areas of the news landscape. Cable news network's "health reporters" cover the story, as do columns based on family issues. Here's Newsday's Family & Relationships column:
Welcome to 2006, when millions of older Americans will be falling down the doughnut hole, searching for new adventures in Medicareland, where things are "curiouser and curiouser."
{snip}
But Gottlich doubts this Congress or President George W. Bush will deal with the fundamental reason for these problems. As correspondent Margaret Warner said recently on PBS' "NewsHour," "There's no standard government-designed plan" administered by Medicare. "Instead, enrollees have to choose from dozens of plans offered by private insurance, with different deductibles, co-pays and lists of authorized drugs."
Some Democrats want to modify the privatization aspects of the law by having at least one standard plan run by Medicare. But that would mean competition for private companies from the more efficient Medicare system, which could use its purchasing power to drive prices down. The Republicans and the drug companies who bought them won't hear of it.
Oooo, ouch.
One thing about this story, though, is that it needs no boost from any news organization or blogs. This is a story so massive and widespread in its implications, a lot of people are going to know about it even if no newspaper ever did a story on it. The millions of seniors nation-wide that are living in this nightmare don't need a newspaper to tell them what's what. And most of them have families that are seeing the pain and anguish this is causing.
Much of the national focus is on the incredibly screwed up rollout of the plan, where people who were supposed to be automatically enrolled weren't and a confusing application process left many others needlessly out in the cold. But, as anyone who followed the debate on the bill knows, that's only the beginning of the problem. Millions of people are going to fall through the cracks of this program, missing out on arcane eligility requirements or landing in that infamous "doughnut hole" where middle-income seniors find their drug coverage curtailed rather than augmented. And states are already getting stuck with the bill. In (hand over heart and bowing my head) Vermont, the tab is already growing rapidly:
The state is spending an average of $239,000 a day to cover the cost of drugs for those on subsidized prescription programs who were falling through the cracks of the new federal Medicare drug program, with no signs of an immediate solution, a state official said Friday.
{snip}
Based on the flood of complaints from seniors, their advocates and pharmacists, the state last week decided, as several other states did, to switch those people back to the pre-Jan. 1 system in which their prescriptions were billed to and paid by the state. Legislation authorized the shift until at least Feb. 10, but Slen said Friday it's unclear how long the problems with the new Part D program will last.
At least 20 states have had to step up to help out seniors. And the list is growing.
This is a screwup on such a massive scale it's hard to grasp it. But after the highly publicized but geographically limited screwing of the Gulf Coast, millions of Americans all over the country are learning some basic facts.
The current GOP can't be trusted to run the government. The mix of cronyism, corporatism, and corruption is undermining any effectiveness the federal government had. Even massive amounts of money can't help, as the Medicare bill's huge cost is going to be wasted in corporate giveaways. Just as soldiers can't get body armor as the government spends so much money to outsource logistics to Halliburton, seniors can't get the drugs they need because this legislation was designed to take of Big Pharma. I'll leave you with one final little story:
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America announced yesterday that retiring Rep. W.J."Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce until he stepped down from that post earlier this year after complaints about his job hunting, will be the trade group's new chief.
PhRMA, the trade association for the drug industry, had approached Tauzin in January while he was in negotiations for the top lobbying job at the Motion Picture Association of America. More importantly, the House committee oversees the drug industry as well as the telecommunications, media and entertainment industries, and Tauzin, whose committee shared jurisdiction over Medicare, had shortly before helped write and promote a controversial Medicare prescription drug benefit for the elderly.
Rumor has it this is one of the biggest money deals given by any trade association.
The GOP insiders cash in while Americans suffer.
update: I edited those couple of words in the intro to give more of a sense of what I was getting at ...