Warren’s plan right medicine for rising health care costs

How about giving Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s whole “Medicare-for-all-numbers-not-adding-up” a rest. That screed is getting about as out-of-control as prescription drug and hospital costs. At least give her credit for putting something on the table. We can tweak the numbers later. Ditto Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Everyone else is criticizing — even as Warren issues the challenge that if anyone has a better plan to offer health care cost-and-coverage relief to bring it.

I think most of us knew that this “gotcha” moment was coming for Warren — even “Saturday Night Live” got into the act, spoofing the senator’s plan. This ridiculous back-and-forth is taking time and focus away from the real priority: the need to fix the system, especially the areas that are in danger of flatlining.

Right now, we are being charged to death literally and figuratively by a broken health care system that is getting worse and more unaffordable every day for those who need it the most. Big pharma is getting injections of sky-high profits, but the rest of us are on fiscal life support.

As consumers, most of us see the impact via our wallets. No one I know cares about the “numerical gymnastics” as Biden tags Warren’s plan. All we know is someone has to rein in the astronomical health care costs — like yesterday. We can’t wait until after the 2020 elections to start fixing a failing and broken system.

Costs for medicines for the most common chronic illnesses are spiraling out of control. Take insulin for diabetics for example. According to stats from AARP, one out of four seniors ration their insulin — literally playing Russian roulette with their health.

A recent report revealed that vincristine, a medicine used to combat different kinds of childhood cancers, is in dangerously short supply because one of only two U.S. manufacturers, Teva Pharmaceuticals, decided to discontinue production this year — it is unconscionable and especially heartbreaking because this medicine is literally a lifeline for children battling the disease and navigating recovery. This definitely qualifies as a health care crisis in need of government intervention.

What exactly is the status of the prescription drug cost rein-in that the House and  President Trump recently touted anyway? I think most would agree that’s the most important plan to implement right now.

Last week I went to get eye drops that generally cost $8 only to find the price tag had ballooned to $60 — more than seven times the cost. I didn’t at all appreciate being surprised like that. Sadly, I know many others who have been confronted with greater surprises, and insurmountable costs. That doesn’t make it right or fair.

Two disabled family members, both retired, over 65 and on fixed incomes, are struggling to pay $400 a day for five days of recovery care following a lung cancer biopsy that will also have a high deductible. I can understand how many have to sell their homes just to cope with the outrageous cost of health care. That is just so wrong.

Cancer care, I am sad to say (and it is almost sacrilegious to do so) seems to have grown into a cottage industry. I would love to see where the billions and billions raised are going and, most importantly, what are the results. How do other countries like Spain and Canada make it work — while it seems the greatest nation in the world cannot?

I vote that our representatives locally and in Congress take a little time to move away from the hot-button impeachment drama and the gladiator-style race for the presidency to resuscitate a health care system so that it works for the people it was meant to help — but doesn’t.

---

Joyce Ferriabough Bolling is a media and political strategist and communications specialist.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/32i3Ecz