Peter Arnold, 67, is a stroke survivor from Chicago. He is disabled and suffers from seizures. On Aug. 14, Arnold wrote his Congressman and other federal leaders, hoping to bring to their attention the fact that his out-of-pocket costs for his anti-seizure medication had increased to $450 a month, an eight-fold jump from the $56 he had been paying.
Though reports say most senior citizens are happy with their Medicare Part D coverage, Arnold is one example of a vulnerable senior lost in the Medicare Part D coverage gap known as the doughnut hole.
After Arnold pays for his medication, he doesn’t have enough money left to pay rent, food, transportation, utilities and other medical expenses.
The last time he had seizures, he was in the hospital for 10 days, and that stay cost Medicare thousands of dollars, he said. He wonders why the government wouldn’t rather give him his medication for free instead of paying for the expenses he racks up receiving emergency medical care.
“A majority of us have been decent and productive tax-paying citizens all of our working lives,” he said in his appeal to the Department of Health and Human Services, Congress and others. “We don’t want a handout, but I feel at the very least we’ve earned a hand up.”
Senior citizens in the doughnut hole are just a statistic until someone hears a story such as this. The truth is, Congress is hard-pressed to find funding for anyone. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was set to expire as of Sept. 30, with an uncertain future for expansion. It may appear that senior citizens can take a number and wait behind the children.
An April report released by Families USA indicated that, as drug prices increase, beneficiaries will reach the doughnut hole faster.
The Institute for America’s Future takes it one step further. It contends that, “The costly, confusing and corrupt design of Part D will cause dire health consequences as 7 million Americans fall into a doughnut hole from which few will escape.”
Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) proposed a bill last April to offer a solution in the pharmaceutical arena. Their bill, if passed, would lower the costs of prescription drugs while saving the federal government as much as $30 billion a year.
“We need to stop drug companies from using patent loopholes to keep lower-priced generics off the shelf and out of patients’ hands,” Stabenow said.
Meanwhile, in the midst of bipartisan battles of mammoth proportion that take in the Iraq War and other healthcare funding issues, senior citizens like Peter Arnold will continue to wonder how long it will take to get some kind of relief.