Suddenly Senior

Stuck in the outhouse

Experts agree that indoor plumbing is the most effective life extender.

Let's say that you're a senior, and you can't afford an indoor toilet. Your old outhouse is cold and often difficult to reach in winter, and so vile in summer that it actually shortens your life. But for the past eight years, the government has promised you a toilet.

Finally, Congress seriously debates a bill that will give you a toilet, your ticket to a healthier life except, but for some inexplicable reason, you'll have to wait another three years, until 2006.

Once installed, your toilet will still be off limits from time to time. You'll still have to trek to the outhouse in January and February, and then again throughout the hot and perilous summer.

Then there's the question of cost. Both the House and Senate make it illegal for you to get bids from toilet contractors. Taxpayers must pay whatever the contractor wants, no matter how exorbitant the price.

Then, to top it off, the House bill demands that your home be torn down in a few years, leaving you out in the cold, dependent on the kindness and generosity of the health care industry for survival.

And while Congress pushes for all this in your name, the Federal Drug Administration and Justice Department threaten to arrest anyone buying the same toilet in Canada where it's often 50 to 80 percent cheaper. That sums up where Congress stands these days with your so-called Medicare drug benefit. For all the convoluted details, see www.suddenlysenior.com/drugbenefitstinks.html.

Now add this to the insanity: According to the Heritage Foundation, more than 4-million retirees who currently receive employee drug benefits will be cut off, thrown into a jerry-built system far less adequate and more likely to undermine their good health.

Under the new bill, benefits will vary widely from region to region. The Wall Street Journal asserts that private plans will receive the lion's share of government support, one of several tactical maneuvers designed to maim and murder the current Medicare system within a decade. Over the past five years Congress has already cut Medicare by $260-billion. Today's inadequate compensation is forcing doctors across the country to limit or stop treating Medicare patients altogether.

My congressman, Rep. Mike Bilirakis, R-Tarpon Springs, happens to be the chairman of the subcommittee that wrote the new House Medicare bill. Mike lives up the road from me. Last month, AARP arranged a meeting to put Mike in touch with some of his senior constituents. They even left it to the congressman to choose the time and day.

Mike was a no-show. The 250 seniors who came with questions were not amused. Many were from points much farther than the 1.6 miles between the congressman's office and the senior center where the constituents gathered.

Mike never apologized. To be in Congress today is never having to say you're sorry. Such arrogance is inevitable in a system where money overshadows people. Congress, bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical companies, doesn't care what constituents want. Apparently, our representatives think we're all fools. At least Mike does.

Later, when asked why Congress doesn't adapt the successful drug program based on competitive bids and negotiated prices run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Mike said: "That's not America!" calling the VA's program a form of "price control."

Well, yes. Maybe Mike hasn't heard, but that's how we do business in America. We bid. We negotiate.

Except in Congress. The current bill in both houses insists that Medicare cannot seek volume discounts or "interfere in any way" with today's skyrocketing drug prices.

Our lawmakers come cheap. The pharmaceutical industry paid Congress only $26-million in 2002 to ensure that Medicare couldn't save taxpayers billions on drugs. Just buying the medicine in Canada might cut the $400-billion drug bill in half. Maybe more. But, of course, that's illegal. The millions the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) contributed the current president's election campaigns have assured that.

Hey, it's only our money, our lives they're playing with. Congress doesn't have to live with this program. These tooth fairies for the pharmaceutical industry have the best healthcare system money can buy.

And they ought to be ashamed.

I'd like to put congressman Mike in that outhouse of mine. Then, I'd take the biggest rock I could find and drop it down the second hole. Maybe then, he'd understand what stinks so much around here.

- Frank Kaiser is a nationally syndicated columnist living in Clearwater. His Web site, www.suddenlysenior.com includes nostalgia, trivia, senior humor and 3111 Best Senior Links. Write Frank, c/o Seniority, the Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731 or e-mail him at floridian@sptimes.com

Suddenly Trivia:

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Medicare HMOs spend an average of 15 percent (as high as 32 percent) on overhead while Medicare spends: a. 2 percent; b. 7 percent; c. 12 percent; d. 17.3 percent.

Answer:

a. With no marketing costs, markups, etc., the "bureaucrats" at Medicare spend less than 2 cents out of every dollar on overhead.

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