An analy­sis out this week by Avalere Health, a for-profit research firm in Wash­ing­ton, found 308 stand-alone drug plans nation­wide next year eli­gi­ble to serve low-income res­i­dents, down about 200 from this year. Those ben­e­fi­cia­ries are sub­si­dized by the gov­ern­ment. They pay lit­tle or no monthly pre­mi­ums and gen­er­ally have lower out-of-pocket costs, called deductibles, for drugs than do higher-income policyholders.

The Medicare Part D cov­er­age for drugs is already flawed. Most seniors have had to leave their drugs at the phar­macy counter as prices con­tinue to increase and that’s because most ben­e­fi­cia­ries have exceeded their max­i­mum ben­e­fits ($2510) with their plan and find them­selves now in the gap or what most peo­ple refer to as “the donut hole” where out of pocket expenses must exceed $4050 for cat­a­strophic cov­er­age to kick in. Most peo­ple never get past it and are forced to wait until Jan­u­ary 1 to start all over again.

It’s sad to see that health care is still not fixed in this coun­try. Hope­fully, with the upcom­ing elec­tion, things will be dif­fer­ent. Health care should be a right, not a priv­i­lege for the few and the wealthy. I don’t see how any­one could vote for McCain who offers up health­care for the free mar­ket. It begs to ques­tion why a democ­racy such as ours can have a Con­gress and Pres­i­dent with health care ben­e­fits while those who vote them into office do not. It is an outrage.

via USA Today