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Lives in the Gap
Imagine living with the devastating diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. Then imagine that the price tag of your monthly antiviral medications quickly exhausts your Medicare prescription coverage and leaves you living life in the gap. Not only must you wage an aggressive offensive to safeguard and manage your health, but also you are left naked to bear the brunt of the financial cost of the disease. Living life in the balance, wedged between necessity and cost, sadly has placed good health at too high a price for some of the most vulnerable among us. For many, the pang of the health-care crunch is felt not at the doctor's office but when paying for prescription medicines.
In the above scenario, after signing up for Medicare Part D in January, the elderly patient's prescription coverage had been devoured by February, leaving the patient to purchase pricey antiviral drugs out of pocket, or, worse, out of retirement savings. Only after spending thousands of dollars and consuming personal funds previously allotted to stay afloat did Medicare kick back in and offer much-needed assistance. This is but one story out of the many seniors who exist in the Medicare coverage gap. Unfortunately, too many Americans face desperate choices in what has become a health-care system replete with ironies.
Given these realities on the ground, Monday's announcement by the White House that drug manufacturers will extend $80 billion over the next decade to soften the blow to the nation's pocketbook (by discounting prescription drugs to seniors and the disabled), serves as a welcome down payment of sorts on health-care reform. Though not a guarantee, the deal is a genuine start by the pharmaceutical industry, in what is becoming a piecemeal approach to tackle the trillion-dollar gorilla in the room.
Buy-in from drug companies is necessary, long overdue and the least the highly-profitable pharmaceutical sector can offer the American public. Still, the question looms: why not make the pledge without any precondition on passage of health-care legislation? Does this give "big pharma" wiggle room, a convenient out if Congress fails to reciprocate its gesture? Or does this move create incentive for the cast of decision makers-- insurance companies, legislators and the American Medical Association included --- to budge from their respective perches? The jury is still out. However, I am heartened that a health care stalemate which seemed prematurely scripted a few days earlier is thawing and that policymakers once again are being held to task to employ strategy to capitalize on public will.
We must choose to look upon those nameless and faceless lives lived in the balance. As Obama stated earlier this month, we have "a moral and economic imperative" to act and show resolve. And we must commit to heart that empathy is not the enemy of reason.
By
Chris T. Pernell
|
June 23, 2009; 6:02 AM ET
| Category:
Pharmaceutical Companies
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Posted by: prophetessjnc | June 24, 2009 10:30 AM
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“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”
It's good to know that there are others who are not just falling for these strategic acts of kindness. 80 billion though may seem like a lot, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars needed to provide quality healthcare to all Americans. If President Obama and his team can take a 800+ Billon dollar band-aid and slowly heal a 2 Trillion dollar wound. I pray that they have a sound plan to do the same for our health care system.
Health Care is about making the sick better
Wellness is the art of keeping the healthy
Healthy
Posted by: MyChristEntertainment | June 23, 2009 12:34 PM
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This a sad but very true problem that exists in this country. More than anything I believe greed is one of the motivating factors of substandard healthcare and high prescription costs. Cure that and maybe we can get somewhere. Thanks for the post!