inkbluesky

Bush Prescribes Family Help on Drug Plan

Faced with a persistent questioner who asked him what could be done to help her elderly mother understand Medicare’s new prescription drug plan, President Bush offered a suggestion that at first elicited shocked gasps, and then supportive applause, from an audience of retirees in Silver Spring yesterday.

“Look, I’m not going to tell you your business, but I think it’s your responsibility to help your mom,” Bush told Wendy Meyeroff. She had asked him to consider extending the May 15 deadline for registering for the new benefit without a penalty, but Bush refused.

“No,” he said. “And the reason why is there’s got to be a fixed time for people to sign up.”

Bush conducted a town hall meeting at Riderwood Village, a retirement community of 2,300 people that straddles the border dividing Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, to encourage seniors to learn about the 10-week-old plan, and he promised that it would save many of them money.

He had a similar event in Canandaigua, N.Y., on Tuesday — part of a stepped-up effort to promote a major Republican initiative that Democrats have branded a disaster. This week, a group led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked the administration to extend the penalty-free enrollment period.

A wealthy elitest who has never done an honest day’s work in his life, who now gets a salary that is five times that of the average American household and not only free health care, but the best health care available gets tough on time limits with a woman who is old enough to be his mother. Bush’s mother is wealthy, but I wonder if he would be telling her to just figure things out or tough luck.

Maryland Democrats used Bush’s presence as an opportunity to attack the plan. “Unfortunately, this prescription drug program is helping America’s seniors the way the federal government helped the victims of Hurricane Katrina,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said at a rally in Silver Spring sponsored by an advocacy group.

Several Riderwood audience members said in interviews that they had decided not to register for the benefit because their existing insurance offered better coverage.

Bush said 26 million people had registered for the new plan, but that figure includes 21 million who were already receiving prescription drug coverage. About 43 million people are eligible, and analysts say the government has struggled to register the very poorest seniors, who stand to gain the most.

[ ]…Audience member Alan Mayers, a retired federal worker, said Bush’s answer didn’t account for seniors who don’t have help from a child. “I think that was a little bit heartless, but consistent with the general approach of the administration toward safety nets,” he said.

Old Man, Look at Your Life

Modern medicine is redefining old age and may soon allow people to live regularly beyond the current upper limit of 120 years, experts said on Wednesday.

It used to be thought there was some built-in limit on lifespan, but a group of scientists meeting at Oxford University for a conference on life extension and enhancement consigned that idea to the dustbin.

Paul Hodge, director of the Harvard Generations Policy Program, said governments around the world — struggling with pension crises, greying workforces and rising healthcare costs — had to face up to the challenge now.

“Life expectancy is going to grow significantly, and current policies are going to be proven totally inadequate,” he predicted.

Doesn’t do much good to extend life if have to live the last quarter of it scurrying around trying to provide basic health care for yourself. If you’re lucky enough to have family alive and close enough to help you and the safety net is such that its complicated or time consuming then you become what most seniors do not want to be, a burden. Its an irony that I have noticed for years, wealthy conservatives that have never done any real work or taken any genuine risks telling the poor or elderly to pull themselves up by the boot straps and find a way to survive. This kind of deflection of responsibilty is designed to induce and exploit feelings of guilt, if you are unable to get with the program it must be some failing on your part. This from people that have never had to punch a clock, go without lunch to pay for their kids dental work, or live off peanut butter sandwiches to buy tires for the car they need to keep working. This is not about hand outs or even pity, its about giving folks a hand, its about what Bush and other conservatives said they stood for, compassion.