corrente

Wait a minute—I thought the Republicans were supposed to be compassionate? I guess Pfizer didn't get the memo:

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the administrator of the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, declined to comment on Pfizer's action yesterday, other than to note that he had urged all of the drug makers "to continue their existing programs."

The Pfizer discount card, called the Living Share Card, was introduced two years ago and was aimed at low-income elderly people.

fizer, the nation's largest drug maker, ended its widely used discount card for the elderly yesterday, leaving several hundred thousand low-income Medicare beneficiaries at least temporarily without access to reduced prices for popular medicines like the cholesterol treatment Lipitor.

The company said that it had been warning its 536,000 cardholders for months that it would discontinue the discount program on Aug. 31 and that it had advised them to sign up for various discount cards that became available under a new Medicare program that began in June.

But consumer advocates, citing the widespread confusion over the new Medicare program, had asked Pfizer to keep its discount card in place until 2006 - the year that prescription drugs will

Sure!

become a standard part of Medicare benefits.

Under the former Pfizer card, a 30-day supply of Lipitor cost $15 - compared with $68 at one Internet pharmacy, for example, or $43.32 at one Canadian Web site.

Mr. Hayes said the Pfizer action was "a harbinger of trouble ahead" in the patchwork of Medicare drug programs, which include a welter of prices and eligibility requirements that some elderly people have found daunting to navigate.

So far only about 4.1 million of the nation's 40 million Medicare beneficiaries have signed up for Medicare-approved discount cards.

"An extremely savvy consumer can swim in these waters successfully," Mr. [Robert M.] Hayes, ]president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group] said. But many have not even tried. "Usually, the needier the person, the sicker the person, the more likely they will be shut out of these programs," he said.
(via NY Times)

So why not just have universal health insurance as the right of a US citizen? It works for every single other Western country but ours. You'd almost think God cursed us, or something.