In 1969 I was in Istanbul, living in my VW camper and on my way to India. Istanbul was so exotic, a city of around two and a half million people. And the Sultanahmet district was seedy with a distinct air of danger. Middle class Turks mostly avoided it and, despite having the 4 top tourist destinations in the city-- Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. But back in those days, Istanbul wasn't much of a tourist destination.
A neighbor's son-- a Trump fanatic-- got rid of his insurance because he's positive Trump is about to offer cheaper healthcare... in a week or a month. He'll hold off on buying healthcare 'til Trump makes healthcare less expensive and better. Poor guy! Yesterday, Robert Pear reported at the New York Times that Trumpanzee has dropped his campaign promise to let Medicare negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices.
When I went to the pharmacy at a cheap grocery store on the other side of tracks, I knew they wouldn't have the medicine, lacosamide, my doctor had prescribed. No one carries it. You go in and show your prescription and they order it and then you go pick it up. The pharmacist told me to come back the next day after 3pm. So I did.
I was going to put this up as an addendum to an earlier post, but I changed my mind and decided it could stand on its own. Ryan Cooper has a tremendously competent look at Bernie's proposal and why it makes such good politics for Democrats, despite opposition from the party's two clueless-- and failed DC leaders, Schumer and Pelosi.
I'm not a doctor or a nurse but I got a good look at the health care system in 2015. I spent the last 16 months battling cancer. (My doctors and nurses and care-givers did most of the battling; but I was there.) As horrible as the whole universe around cancer treatment is, there was one thing that was very lucky: I was diagnosed after my 65th birthday. Medicare. I don't know what the whole treatment wound up costing. I stopped counting after a million dollars.
In 2003, the Republican-dominated House passed a GOP version of healthcare, Bush's Medicare Part D. Today it is, by far, the worst part of the Medicare system and it allows for these systemic ripping off of the elderly by Big Pharma. The final vote in the House was 216-215; it passed by one lousy vote.
Republicans have a different perspective on healthcare-- pay or dieLast October we started looking at Bernie Sanders' investigation into outrageous generic drug pricing under Medicare Part D. The inherent unfairness towards working families is emblematic of the GOP approach to Medicare; it's their version.
I went to college in the middle sixties. My friends and I marked the passage of time in many ways and one involved the release of new albums by our favorite bands-- the Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Who, Airplane, Big Brother, Dead, etc. When we got wind that a new Stones album, for example, was coming down the pike, some of us would shop around for the finest LSD to commemorate the event. When Between the Buttons came out in February 1967, many of us had heard it already because the U.K. company had released it a month early in the hope of stacking up some heavy import sales from America.
Some good news: last week I was back at City of Hope for tests after the interruption in my treatment caused by the broken ribs. Of course my oncologist is concerned about all the chemo side effects-- from the fainting that led to the broken ribs to the more mundane effects that plague patients in treatment, like constipation, weakness and fatigue, loss of appetite, neuropathy, etc.
Sooner or later, we all need health insurance. OK, maybe the 1% doesn't... but everyone else. When I was a divisional president of TimeWarner, I got the most platinum-plated health insurance money could buy. They took good care of their top executives. When my lawyer told me what they were giving me insurance-wise-- without even having to negotiate-- I was stunned. Even after I retired, they took incredibly good care of my insurance needs.
