{"id":22000,"date":"2014-02-24T11:49:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T16:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22000"},"modified":"2014-02-24T11:49:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T16:49:39","slug":"agreement-on-something-from-both-sides-of-the-political-spectrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22000","title":{"rendered":"Agreement On Something From Both Sides Of The Political Spectrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s rare when the right and left agree on anything. It is really rare when publications on the far right and the far left agree, but that has happened on the issue of rationing drugs for the elderly. This article is based on articles in The American Spectator<\/a> and The Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The American Spectator reports:<\/p>\n

Buried beneath the avalanche of recent news reports about the latest Obamacare-mandated funding cuts to the Medicare<\/a> Advantage (MA) program is a related but far more disturbing story \u2014 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)<\/a> has taken a major step toward rationing medications to the elderly. Since passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003<\/a>, seniors enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug<\/a> program have been guaranteed access to \u201call or substantially all\u201d of the drugs in several classes of pharmaceuticals. President Obama\u2019s<\/a> health care bureaucrats, however, have proposed removing three of these classes from the \u201cprotected\u201d list.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Huffington Post reports:<\/p>\n

A proposed rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would make significant changes to the Medicare Part D<\/a> prescription drug program. In short, the rule change affects what are known as the “protected classes” of pharmaceuticals under Part D — classes of drugs in which, under current law, coverage must be provided for “substantially all” medicines. The logic in maintaining these protected classes is inarguable. Medicare beneficiaries coping with serious, chronic illnesses should have access to the medications that they and their physicians have deemed the most effective treatment for their conditions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Medications are not interchangeable. One drug can have vastly different effects, and side effects, on different patients. Thus, Medicare Part D is structured to ensure that patients who require antidepressants, antipsychotics and immunosuppressants (critical drugs for patients who have undergone organ transplants) have access to the unique medicines they need to protect their lives and health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…The best way to make Medicare more cost-efficient is to help patients better manage their chronic illnesses and avoid long hospitalizations and expensive acute care episodes. The CMS proposed rule change will do just the opposite. Restricting access to the medicines patients need to manage depression, avoid organ transplant rejection, and treat psychosis will drive healthcare utilization in far more costly ways. That’s a betrayal of Medicare’s promise of access to care for our most vulnerable, older Americans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Obama Administration seems to forget that senior citizens vote. Senior citizens also pay attention. ObamaCare<\/a> may have been passed with the support of the AARP<\/a>, lulling seniors into a false belief that the it would not be harmful to them, but many seniors are waking up to the fact that serious cuts to Medicare are part of the President’s plan for ObamaCare. Senior citizens and Americans have been lied to about ObamaCare. It is time to repeal it and start over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s rare when the right and left agree on anything. It is really rare when publications on the far right and the far left agree, but that has happened on the issue of rationing drugs for the elderly. This article … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4083,5014,2195,7165,2043,1381,7164,7],"class_list":["post-22000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aarp","tag-american-spectator","tag-centers-for-medicare-and-medicaid-services","tag-cms","tag-huffington-post","tag-medicare","tag-medicare-part-d","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22001,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22000\/revisions\/22001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}