By Rita Hatch
Senior Voice Correspondent
Our insane drug and medical care costs
News and Views from Rita
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Suns, skies, clouds and flowers of June together cannot rival for one hour, October’s bright blue Alaska weather. – H H Jackson.
If you think your prescribed meds are getting more expensive each time you get another order in, you are absolutely right.
Just a couple of questions to my friends: Wouldn’t the world be a far better place if there were no insurance companies? Why do the people on Medicare Part D have to buy into an insurance company?
When I saw my doctor last week, he told me his experience with his seven year old son, who has many allergies and needs to carry an epi-pen, which is dated and whose price has risen astronomically. The doctor said that he does not know how the people he prescribes them to can afford too buy them. He said that his son is lucky to be the son of a doctor, who gets the pens at a wholesale price.
The woman CEO who rules the prices of all the meds she sells should be made to pay for the meds she forces everyone else to pay for, but that wouldn’t bother her since she gave herself a 600 percent raise in her salary!
Unfortunately, she is not the only one ripping off the populace. I do not know what happens in the rest of the country, since I have been an Alaskan for nearly 50 years, but I do know that our doctors charge much more than others Outside.
And let us not talk about nursing homes and assisted living institutions. I have been counseling many of my clients that if they do not have a darn good reason for staying in Alaska, when the time comes to leave their homes and go into assisted living, they should pack their bags. The financial benefits that many Alaskans receive do not outweigh the costs of living here.
I know that sounds very anti-Alaskan but since I do not have a reason to leave this beautiful land, I‘ll be sticking around as long as I am alive. And I will still be answering questions and counseling my clients on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and assorted other senior issues.
Rita Hatch is an Older Persons Action Group, Inc. board member and volunteers for OPAG’s Medicare assistance program. Call her at 276-1059 in Anchorage, or 1-800-478-1059 toll-free statewide. Email ritaopag@gci.net.
