Spires: Scary times — Health care costs
was recently in a conversation with a longtime friend of mine I had not seen in a while. We do keep up with each other on Facebook, which is a good thing.
We were actually at a mutual friend’s funeral which had been delayed a year because of COVID. After the service we had an opportunity for a few minutes of one-on-one conversation.
He and a first cousin of mine have been battling with Leukemia for many years. My friend is now back on treatments and our conversation soon turned to medical costs.
His treatment cost $19,000 a month of which he pays $700 (insurance and Medicare pay the difference). He received a notice last month that his share is going up to $1,900 a month.
Think about that for a second, $1,900 a month. That is more that many folks make, especially retired folks. I really don’t know what will happen if you cannot pay for the treatment. I’m not sure if Medicaid kicks in or if you just don’t get the treatment.
Here is something just as disturbing. The new Alzheimer’s drug from Biogen has an annual cost of $56,000. There are over 50 million Americans now over 65 on Medicare of which approximately 5 million have some form of dementia. Studies recently reported (Wall Street Journal, USA Today and New Your Times have articles on this) that administered the total cost could equal or exceed the spending on all of the remaining Medicare benefits combined.
Even if you have Medicare and a supplemental policy it could easily be between $7,500 and $11,000 out of pocket expenses.
Here is something else to add to our concerns: According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 10% of all people over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s disease, and as many as 50% of people over 85 have it. The number of people with the disease doubles every 5 years beyond age 65.
The effectiveness of the new drug is still questionable if you have been keeping up with it over the past few weeks.
It seems that we managed to develop and start administering hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines in under a year. We have given about 70 percent of the population of the United States shots at no cost. I understand it is a pandemic, which certainly deserved the attention and especially the vaccine.
My question is why is there such a high out-of-pocket price attached to life-saving drugs for cancer treatments, rejection medication and Alzheimer?
I would appreciate any feedback someone has on this subject as I am truly in the dark about how this all works. By the way, next week I’ll get back to the less serious writing.
Source: dothaneagle.com By: Byron Spires
Byron Spires is a retired newspaper editor. He has written dozens of short stories and serials in the Havana Herald. He recently published “The Curious Life of Marci Bell” in a series of three books. You can email him at byronspires51@gmail.com.