This coming year the prices for comprehensive medical care will more than double affecting mostly lower to middle class senior citizens. Although in the last ten years promises were made of free medical coverage and free prescriptions, in 2001 prices for medical care will come up to as high as $179 a month and only $500 worth of prescriptions will be covered each year. Only those covered by government medical plans in Los Angeles and Orange County will be mostly unaffected.
According to Nancy-Ann DeParle, in charge of the federal Health Care Financing Agency, this is the first time that most people will not have access to prescription drug coverage. Premiums are increasing by more than twice as much, and the generosity of drug coverage will also decline. Over 6 million of the 40 million Medicare recipients receive their coverage through HMOs. The government explained that there would be a price hike and the benefits would decrease but the extent of it is much more dramatic than expected.
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Back off Grover, there's a new Ogre in town!Other than the Los Angeles and Orange County, parts of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania were saved from the complete drop of medical care. The price hikes and benefit reductions are a double whammy to seniors who found out in the earlier part of this year that a number of HMOs are at least cutting back if not dropping out of participation in this program. Almost 1 million of the Medicare recipients will be without their care coverage or will have to change to a new plan. As Jamie Court puts it "People joined HMOs to get the prescription drug benefits, and those benefits dried up."� These price hikes show the view of HMO executives, raising their rates because they don't get enough money from the complex federal reimbursement...