Across the country, many low-income people face rising costs and dwindling health:

*In Denver, D'Angelo, 56, saw her drug costs under Medicare rise to more than $500 a month. Now they're even higher, because she has reached the "doughnut hole," a period during which Medicare beneficiaries with high drug costs must pay for 100% of their prescriptions. Although she has cut back on her 22 medications, she recently put $2,679.19 on her credit card for a three-month supply. "I have no idea how I'm going to pay for it," she says.

*In Jacksonville, mentally ill residents of Doug Atkins' assisted-living facility are refusing to spend part of their $54 monthly personal allowance on $1 and $3 drug co-payments. "They're saying they'll just go to the emergency room," Atkins says.

*In Lafayette, La., Dorothy Broussard, 58, went a week in February without her arthritis and multiple sclerosis drugs because she was in the "doughnut hole." Her prescriptions came to about $1,400 per month. "I almost passed out in the pharmacy."

And a group is suing the government (also from USA TODAY - see the link in the above article):

The Bush administration was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of failing to ensure that poor people were enrolled properly in Medicare's new prescription drug benefit.

As a result, these beneficiaries cannot get the medicine they need, according to the suit by a group of older people and advocacy groups.

They charge that Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt failed to make sure that many of the poorest people eligible for the benefit signed up for private insurance plans as Congress had required.

It's time to reign in the Corporate Drug Cartels and make them respect humanity. It's time for them to live up to their obligations.

More spending on developing drugs to save people's lives,  and less on selling stiffy pills.

WASHINGTON, April 26 -- The Bush administration issued a new policy on Wednesday that protects Medicare beneficiaries against the sudden loss of coverage for drugs they are taking under the prescription drug program.

Under the policy, insurers can still change their lists of covered drugs, known as formularies. But if they drop any drugs or impose new restrictions, they must exempt beneficiaries who are now taking those drugs.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, summarized the policy this way: "In general, a plan cannot change your coverage for the drugs you are using during the year. The stability of drug formularies is extremely important for many of our beneficiaries."

Hopefully, this will at least limit the bait & switch tactics that companies have been using.

One way or the other, this darkness has to give....

I'm trying to remember what I read this morning when half asleep(and have no link right now)as to profiteering on the backs of the sick.  Some doctor in the late 80's left his job to take job as CEO of I think a health insurance company(or a drug company) and has been found out as being given over a BILLION dollars in stock options in the company..guess that puts that EXXON guy to shame with his measly 400 MILLION dollar retirement package. I hope I got that article mostly right here.

How much more obscene do these salaries have to get before people realize that those salaries are directly effecting what they are paid or not paid-in whatever company they work for?

'Poverty is the worst form of violence'--Gandhi