Medicare drug plan was bait-and-switch scheme; plan prices to skyrocket next year

Breaking News for Friday, December 05, 2008 Exclusive Video from Generation Rx Film Features Dr. Julian Whitaker on the Drugging of Children GM Crops Climb to Nearly One-Tenth of Global Crop Production Consumer Product Safety Commission Sued Over Allowing Toxic Chemicals in Children's Toys Acidic Diets Cause Bone Loss; Alkaline Diet Protect Calcium in Bones Big Brother DNA Database is Illegal, Rules EU Court      See all Breaking News... FREE Natural Health Newsletter Receive natural health product reviews, recommendations and alerts. Instant download of 20+ free health reports and exclusive interviews. Join over 1.2 million monthly readers. Unsubscribe anytime, email privacy guaranteed Products Related to This Article* • Revealed: Natural Health Solutions (free) Free summary of book by Mike Adams for learning censored natural health remedies * Recommended by the Health Ranger. See more recommendations on right → Articles Related to This Article: • Medicare to fund obesity treatments, but which ones really work? • Medicare payments to doctors to be slashed; AMA panics as more doctors drop Medicare patients • Judge Rules U.S. Drug Companies Defrauded Medicare with Price Fixing Scheme

Monthly costs for the cheapest Medicare plans will rise from $9.46 to $13.58 according to information compiled and released by Medicare. But that's not all; Humana Inc. -- the largest provider of low-cost drug plans -- has raised prices 500 percent in some cases, and Medicare itself reduced its monthly subsidy by 15 percent to $80 per person.

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said that "Many people are going to feel that they are victims of a bait-and-switch tactic...there's no question that it will be an extraordinary disappointment."

Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California added that "The department's numbers appear to be wrong, and they disguise significant increase in premiums for Medicare drug plans … the release of erroneous information about the cost of premiums -- whether deliberate or not -- is a disservice to millions of seniors."

Although 2007 estimates for Medicare plans are not being backed down by Medicare officials, the new plans for 2007 include costs of stand-alone drug plans and programs where people sign up with insurance companies for administration of all of their benefits, according to Mark McClellan, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in a response letter to Representative Waxman.

"The Medicare drug plan was never really about saving money for senior citizens," explains Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and critic of drug company profiteering. "It was a politically-motivated scheme to ensure the continued profits of pharmaceutical companies by locking in drug customers while making it illegal for the federal government to negotiate volume discounts. It should have been called the Big Pharma profit preservation plan."

###
Get articles like this delivered to you FREE in our popular email newsletter

Related CounterThink Cartoons:

Related Articles: • Medicare to fund obesity treatments, but which ones really work? • Medicare payments to doctors to be slashed; AMA panics as more doctors drop Medicare patients • Judge Rules U.S. Drug Companies Defrauded Medicare with Price Fixing Scheme	Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com Email this article to a friend Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us Permalink to this article: http://www.NaturalNews.com/020803.html Reprinting this article: Non-commercial OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link. Embed article link: (copy HTML code below): <a href = "http://www.NaturalNews.com/020803.html">Medicare drug plan was bait-and-switch scheme; plan prices to skyrocket next year</a>