How I Pay for Drugs

Caiscais (pronounced “cosh-cosh”) is a charming town facing the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Portugal.  The day we arrived, other old ladies in our tour group ran down to the local pharmacy and refilled all their prescriptions for a fraction of the cost of the same drugs in the States.  I did not go with them.  Thanks to John Durkalski, I have excellent health insurance through Navistar’s Retiree Health Plan, which pays for medical, dental, eye glasses – and sends me drugs at a huge discount. 

This week in my mail box I found my “Prescription Drug Summary.”    My “year-to-date” amount for “total drug costs” came to $7,783.27.  Medicare and my insurance – well, John’s insurance – paid for most of this.  I only paid $78.85.  

Lucky me! 

But what about other people?  In the U.S. medical bills are so enormous that many people can not pay for even minimum health care.  Old people must choose between pills and food.  The average wage-earner, no matter how hard he/she works or how many hours, can not make enough money to pay for insurance and/or medical bills.  

If I did not have insurance, I could not afford my medical bills.  The 20% not covered by Medicare would exceed my Social Security benefits.  I could not pay for Sensiphar, the drug that controls my parathyroid hormone and prevents having to cut my throat again.

Many people are under the delusion that we have the “best medical system in the World.”  Actually, when it comes to health care – based on length of life, survival rates for cancer, infant mortality, and other factors – the U.S. ranks below every country in Western Europe.  The place where health care is equal to that of the U.S. is Bangladesh! 

Republicans are trying to destroy Obamacare.   The problem is not that the government is taking over health care, it is that Obamacare does not go far enough.  Congress collects millions from insurance companies, the A.M.A. (the doctors’ union), and pharmaceutical companies.  That group pays for elections, so Congressmen ignore people who merely have one man-one vote.
        
Every other industrial nation has a national health plan that is better than ours, that insures all its citizens and provides better care at lower cost.  That is the truth.

Have you heard?  “This is Socialism.”  And that is not a bad thing.  Today people, who have just as much “freedom” as we have, live in Socialist-Democracies in places like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. And don’t forget Finland, which has the best schools in the World..  Too bad they are all have long, cold winters.  Otherwise, when countries are rated on many factors, including education, health care, and, best of all, “quality of life” the Scandinavian countries, with their Socialist governments, all rank far higher than the good old U.S.A.