Its almost the end of another year, hard to believe I have been retired somewhere between 5 and 7 years. That first year I was semi-retired and came into the office at Restaurant Row a couple of days a week. So much has happened in the intervening years: Patient Protection Act aka Obama Care is the law of the land. Employers in Hawaii didn’t get the shock that mainland employers did because the Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act meant that employers were used to providing health insurance for their employees. With two laws covering health care, Hawaii employees get the most generous benefits. If PPA has a more generous benefit (ie drug coverage, coverage to age 26) then that applies in Hawaii. If the Prepaid has the more generous benefit (ie lower deductibles, invitro, lower maximum out of pocket) that’s what applies in Hawaii. Health care is still extremely expensive.
It will help a good deal if Medicare were able to negotiate drug prices (as does Kaiser and large insurance companies). The reason they don’t at present is because in order the get Medicare Part D through Congress, the administration had to agree that Medicare would not negotiate for lower drug costs. Big Pharma was afraid that if Medicare could negotiate their profits would go down, never mind that US taxpayers already subsidize the drug companies by allowing deductions for research and advertising from their taxes and that other countries pay less for drugs manufactured in the US than Medicare and US companies do. Drug companies have multiple lobbyists for every member of Congress because they like it that way. There is an ad on TV right now with a woman who says that if the law passes that allows negotiation, she won’t be able to get the drug she needs because her doctor won’t decide on her drug, the insurance company will. That ad is deceitful. I have been on Medicare since 2005. With my prescriptions, there are three drugs costing over $5,000 a month and an infusion costing $28,000. My prescriptions were never turned down under my prescription coverage plans. Thank goodness for Medicare and thank goodness for me. Lucky we live Hawaii.