Want Government Healthcare? Talk to a Senior

I've written about the healthcare mess in this country a few times in the past, and you can check out the archives to see what I think.

If you want an idea of what universal government care will be like, just talk to any senior on the new Medicare prescription drug program. They'll tell you that an arbitrary and inflexible bureaucracy has taken over their medical decisions, and they don't like it. From what I've heard, it sounds like plenty of seniors are wondering if they would be better off to go back to just paying for their prescriptions rather than continue to be subjected to the bureaucrats.

Here's the gist of what I'm getting. Shortly after signing up for the federal drug program, your prescriptions will be subject to review. Then you'll be told that one or two of those prescriptions you've been taking for years aren't necessary. So you can't have them anymore.

You say, OK, fine, I'll just buy them on my own. You might actually be told no; you can't buy that drug because the government has decided you don't need it. You have to get your physician to help fight the battle on your behalf.

Even more commonly, a bureaucrat will tell you to replace a prescription with either a generic or another brand that's cheaper. The alternatives may or may not be the same as what you've been taking. But the bureaucrat says it's basically the same thing, so you give it a try.

But the alternate drug gives you horrible side effects. Whether pain and numbness in extremeties or indigestion or diarrhea, you tell your doctor this new drug is terrible and you want to go back to the old one. Again, the bureaucrat says no, you can't go back to that drug; so what if the generic is making you sick. So again, you fight for the right to go ahead and purchase it at full price.

But the final insult: Since the federal prescription drug program pays whatever the drug companies want to charge, and the government is not allowed to flex their giant group purchasing power to negotiate lower prices, the price of those drugs you're back to buying at full price has gone up another 20 or 30 or 40 bucks a month.

No question the healthcare system is in crisis. No question that the healthcare lobbies, the most powerful being the drug companies, insurance companies, and trial lawyers, will make sure that no congressperson will dare do anything to fix it.

But do you really want the government to run healthcare?

The very definition of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.