According to a recent New York Times article by Gina Kolata health insurance companies are cleverly adopting a new pricing plan for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save lives or slow the process of serious diseases.
Now rather than paying a fixed co-pay charge for your prescription medications, patients will now be charged a percentage of the actual cost of certain high priced drugs up to as much as 33 percent. This new drug pricing scheme is called Tier 4 plans and is being touted by industry economists as a cost saving mechanism for health care consumers.
While the US government’s Medicare plan first conceived the 4-tier plan idea as a way of distinguishing between certain considered non-essential life-style or enhancement medications such impotence reducing products, the private sector, however, is now using such 4-tier pricing schemes to separate out the most seriously ill people whose illness or pain requires the most expensive bills.
Rather than spreading the insurance plan’s total cost out over the entire population served, this new pricing plan separates the most seriously ill consumers, often with the most pain, from the healthier who require less expensive medicines. If this is not health care inequity what is?
Some of the more common diseases that have now been moved into this category include multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Under these plans even the insured and more affluent people may not be able to afford the treatments they require.
What disturbs this writer is the industry’s audacity to inflict this costly and inhumane pricing system on you and me in spite of the fact that both pharmaceutical and insurance companies are already charging exorbitant prices and making such huge profits. This is occurring when over one-third of Wisconsin citizens have no health care insurance and many remain ill or are dying yearly because they cannot afford the high costs of medications.
Why would the industry want to provoke health care consumers more than they already are? The reason is because they want to be in a position when the stem cell medicine revolution era arrives to be able to serve both the average insured person and the very rich and powerful with even far more costly miracle cures and enhancements. The Tier 4 option will pave the way to allow such health inequities to co-exist while still allowing the existing very profitable system to continue.
If consumers allow such an inequitable drug pricing system to continue the far more costly future cell based miracle drugs both for diseases and increased longevity enhancement will be accessible and affordable only for the rich and powerful.
Many readers who read this article will wonder how it is possible for the government’s Federal Drug Administration and the federal insurance commission would allow licensed drug manufacturers and insurance companies the right to perpetuate such a pricing plan on the American public? There are two main reasons. One, of course is that it is the very pharmaceutical and insurances company officials that sit on the policy-making and governing sub-committees that write these rules. The second reason is that these two industries pay by far more for your representative’s re-election than either you or I.
Readers should contact their congressional representatives now and ask them to call an emergency session to stop such unjust drug and insurance pricing practices NOW.
Respectfully, William R. Benedict, Madison
Monday, April 28, 2008
Enough is Enough
Did you know that recent US government budget figures indicate that this administration has spent enough money in the prosecution of the Iraq war to give every Iraq citizen $150,000 and every Iraq family $500,000? This figure is based on Iraq’s population estimated presently at twenty-five million.
Based upon the three trillion dollar cost of the war to date, it has cost each US citizen $10,000 dollars. Of course the reality is that this war has cost you and me to date not one single penny. This total five year three trillion dollar debt has been borrowed and will be a burden on our children and grandchildren for many years to come.
At the present cost of 25 billion a month, two more years of staying in Iraq is another 600 billion of debt our grandchildren will owe our foreign sovereign creditors in China and the Middle East.
The entire three trillion dollars was given away through so-called “emergency supplementals,” meaning that your money was spent completely outside the normal budgeting process and without the normal budget caps. It is the equivalent of writing Uncle Sam a blank check.
These were quick and easy give-away dollars that our grandchildren will be paying interest on far out into the unforeseeable future. In other words three trillion dollars was given out in an un-scrutinized, undifferentiated and totally unaccountable fashion.
Contrast this administration’s shoddy spending and record keeping practices on the Iraq war with how it is presently dealing with the present home mortgage crisis. It has taken this administration since last August to help fewer than 2,500 of more than 2 million Americans staring at foreclosure this year.
While our defense department can pay over 150,000 private security contractors over $400,000 per person, plus expensive life insurance policies, compared to only $40,000 per US soldier per year, this administration has scrutinized and micro-managed to death assistance to struggling American homeowners.
For these prospective recipients saddled with foreclosed houses, the “appropriateness” of government loans or insurance is calculated down to the smallest detail including itemized tax returns and assorted eligibility requirements. When asked to help Americans in need here on the home front the issue of how much taxpayer money should be put at risk suddenly becomes this administration’s chief concern.
Since World War II it appears no longer necessary for the people’s national legislature – our Congress - to pass a formal declaration of war. Now it is also becoming increasingly popular for our congressional leaders to shirk their constitutional responsibilities by simply approving humongous blank checks to the President to fight his own personal wars.
Contact your Congress persons and tell them that you aren’t going to take it any more. Tell them that you no longer consider them responsible stewards of the peace nor sufficiently competent to manage the people’s finances. Tell them that you will be looking for a new representative to do the people’s business in Washington. Get out and vote in the upcoming election and write in the name of the person who you think will represent you and your country’s best interests.
After you have written your letter or made your call, visit your nearest library or bookstore and pick up “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes on the true cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.
Respectfully,
William R. Benedict, Madison
Based upon the three trillion dollar cost of the war to date, it has cost each US citizen $10,000 dollars. Of course the reality is that this war has cost you and me to date not one single penny. This total five year three trillion dollar debt has been borrowed and will be a burden on our children and grandchildren for many years to come.
At the present cost of 25 billion a month, two more years of staying in Iraq is another 600 billion of debt our grandchildren will owe our foreign sovereign creditors in China and the Middle East.
The entire three trillion dollars was given away through so-called “emergency supplementals,” meaning that your money was spent completely outside the normal budgeting process and without the normal budget caps. It is the equivalent of writing Uncle Sam a blank check.
These were quick and easy give-away dollars that our grandchildren will be paying interest on far out into the unforeseeable future. In other words three trillion dollars was given out in an un-scrutinized, undifferentiated and totally unaccountable fashion.
Contrast this administration’s shoddy spending and record keeping practices on the Iraq war with how it is presently dealing with the present home mortgage crisis. It has taken this administration since last August to help fewer than 2,500 of more than 2 million Americans staring at foreclosure this year.
While our defense department can pay over 150,000 private security contractors over $400,000 per person, plus expensive life insurance policies, compared to only $40,000 per US soldier per year, this administration has scrutinized and micro-managed to death assistance to struggling American homeowners.
For these prospective recipients saddled with foreclosed houses, the “appropriateness” of government loans or insurance is calculated down to the smallest detail including itemized tax returns and assorted eligibility requirements. When asked to help Americans in need here on the home front the issue of how much taxpayer money should be put at risk suddenly becomes this administration’s chief concern.
Since World War II it appears no longer necessary for the people’s national legislature – our Congress - to pass a formal declaration of war. Now it is also becoming increasingly popular for our congressional leaders to shirk their constitutional responsibilities by simply approving humongous blank checks to the President to fight his own personal wars.
Contact your Congress persons and tell them that you aren’t going to take it any more. Tell them that you no longer consider them responsible stewards of the peace nor sufficiently competent to manage the people’s finances. Tell them that you will be looking for a new representative to do the people’s business in Washington. Get out and vote in the upcoming election and write in the name of the person who you think will represent you and your country’s best interests.
After you have written your letter or made your call, visit your nearest library or bookstore and pick up “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes on the true cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.
Respectfully,
William R. Benedict, Madison
We Won’t Take It Anymore
I was saddened this week to read about the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) release of REX’s latest Environmental Impact Statement and the commission’s staff ruling that the company’s plan be approved. In spite of this I am still hopeful that Indiana’s Governor or its two U.S. Senators and the district’s congressional representative will still stand up and tell the 5-member commission that the 37,000 southeastern Indiana residents are tired and just won’t take it anymore.
Meanwhile, I am so proud of the members of the Franklin County Area Plan Commission who recently voted unanimously to turn down the “special exception application” from REX. I am also proud of the county’s citizens who for months have written letters to this newspaper explaining why they were opposed to this project and arguing for its defeat.
Finally, I am proud of this newspaper’s editor, John Estridge, who in his most recent editorial so deservedly castigated Indiana’s congressional delegation and its Governor for seemingly caving in to the rich and powerful and in so doing putting 37,000 of our sisters and brothers and future generations of Franklin County residents at serious risk of their property and their lives.
As a former Franklin County resident with still deep roots in this community I strongly suggest that each person who reads this letter write or call their representatives and tell them that if and when the FERC approves this dastardly project they will no longer have your vote in the fall elections. Only by taking such action now can Franklin County residents stop the next great incursion on their rights, liberties and lives.
Most respectfully,
William R. Benedict
Meanwhile, I am so proud of the members of the Franklin County Area Plan Commission who recently voted unanimously to turn down the “special exception application” from REX. I am also proud of the county’s citizens who for months have written letters to this newspaper explaining why they were opposed to this project and arguing for its defeat.
Finally, I am proud of this newspaper’s editor, John Estridge, who in his most recent editorial so deservedly castigated Indiana’s congressional delegation and its Governor for seemingly caving in to the rich and powerful and in so doing putting 37,000 of our sisters and brothers and future generations of Franklin County residents at serious risk of their property and their lives.
As a former Franklin County resident with still deep roots in this community I strongly suggest that each person who reads this letter write or call their representatives and tell them that if and when the FERC approves this dastardly project they will no longer have your vote in the fall elections. Only by taking such action now can Franklin County residents stop the next great incursion on their rights, liberties and lives.
Most respectfully,
William R. Benedict
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Let’s follow California’s lead on health care costs
Guest Column - The Capital Times
April 2, 2008
By now we know that solving Wisconsin’s ever-growing home health care costs is a multifaceted problem and will not be solved by any single solution. And while there are many comprehensive solutions being proposed, none of them go directly to the core issue---monolithic and predatory health care pharmaceutical pricing practices.
In 2005 my partner and I were vacationing in San Diego California. While reading the San Diego Tribune I just happened to read about California’s 3 billion dollar stem cell research program and about the many health care stakeholder groups who all were fighting for something they were calling a “public benefit.”
I continued to read and soon learned what they meant by the words, “public benefit.” They wanted to make sure that medical breakthroughs and medicines developed through stem cell research, and funded by their tax dollars, would be available and affordable to every citizen in California.
When we weigh the billions and billions of dollars to be both made and saved through miracle cures of our worse most debilitating diseases and by such life enhancements as restored memory, increased mobility, regenerated body parts, and most of all, increased longevity, only then can we begin to appreciate the real scope and importance of the health care policy issue now before us.
Californians have learned their lessons well from our nation’s health care problems and have decided to go directly to the root of our health care pricing crisis. They are no longer going to pay twice for their health care: Once for the research and once again for the exorbitantly priced medications and therapies.
Wisconsin citizens should follow California’s lead and pass legislation now that supports federal and state funding of stem cell research in Wisconsin along with public health care benefit safeguards.
“Public health care benefit safeguards” can mean anything from requiring a successful grantee to return 25 percent of their profit back on their billion-dollar stem cell-based drug discovery to the state of Wisconsin to be put in a special patient health care fund.
Or a successful grantee would simply be required to submit a plan to ensure affordable prices for all Wisconsin citizens, especially the medium-and-low income and underserved populations.
The bottom line is that you and I as Wisconsin citizens can prove to ourselves and our grandchildren, and future generations, that we have learned our lesson from exorbitant health care pricing. We have learned not to give our money to people without first asking who they are, why they need it, and how they plan on using it. This new policy of asking the public-funded grantee to meet certain expectations and provide some return on our investment is better than writing a blank check and continuing with health care in Wisconsin as we now know it.
April 2, 2008
By now we know that solving Wisconsin’s ever-growing home health care costs is a multifaceted problem and will not be solved by any single solution. And while there are many comprehensive solutions being proposed, none of them go directly to the core issue---monolithic and predatory health care pharmaceutical pricing practices.
In 2005 my partner and I were vacationing in San Diego California. While reading the San Diego Tribune I just happened to read about California’s 3 billion dollar stem cell research program and about the many health care stakeholder groups who all were fighting for something they were calling a “public benefit.”
I continued to read and soon learned what they meant by the words, “public benefit.” They wanted to make sure that medical breakthroughs and medicines developed through stem cell research, and funded by their tax dollars, would be available and affordable to every citizen in California.
When we weigh the billions and billions of dollars to be both made and saved through miracle cures of our worse most debilitating diseases and by such life enhancements as restored memory, increased mobility, regenerated body parts, and most of all, increased longevity, only then can we begin to appreciate the real scope and importance of the health care policy issue now before us.
Californians have learned their lessons well from our nation’s health care problems and have decided to go directly to the root of our health care pricing crisis. They are no longer going to pay twice for their health care: Once for the research and once again for the exorbitantly priced medications and therapies.
Wisconsin citizens should follow California’s lead and pass legislation now that supports federal and state funding of stem cell research in Wisconsin along with public health care benefit safeguards.
“Public health care benefit safeguards” can mean anything from requiring a successful grantee to return 25 percent of their profit back on their billion-dollar stem cell-based drug discovery to the state of Wisconsin to be put in a special patient health care fund.
Or a successful grantee would simply be required to submit a plan to ensure affordable prices for all Wisconsin citizens, especially the medium-and-low income and underserved populations.
The bottom line is that you and I as Wisconsin citizens can prove to ourselves and our grandchildren, and future generations, that we have learned our lesson from exorbitant health care pricing. We have learned not to give our money to people without first asking who they are, why they need it, and how they plan on using it. This new policy of asking the public-funded grantee to meet certain expectations and provide some return on our investment is better than writing a blank check and continuing with health care in Wisconsin as we now know it.
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