More Snow Cats and Kvetch of the Day

So it's been snowing, but at least we've had a little sun the past two days, and that's perked me up a bit. Still, it's about 10 degrees (-12 C) out--pretty nippy. Zero with the wind chill. Brrr!


The cats don't seem to care one way or the other. Snow, sun, clouds, warm, cold...it's still all about napping, playing, and two square meals a day with them. That, to me, sounds like the life.


Morgan has taken a liking to my egg cooler when I bring it in for the evening. Cats are weird.






Kvetch of the Day

Medicare cost Mr. O'Kitten and I each $1,122 last year, plus the deductible, and that doesn't cover prescriptions, dental, or eyes.

Not to mention that there's about a 30% co-pay for most doctor visits and other services. and this on the extremely limited income you get from SSDI.

But, if you're like us, that extremely limited income is just a wee bit too much for you to be eligible for Low Income Medicare Part D (prescription coverage). This means that if you want Part D, you have to pay a private health insurance company for it. That would've cost us about $400/month--a solid 25% of our income. I mean--come on! And even then it wouldn't have covered every prescription that we need.

Not to mention that having Part D would've made us ineligible for the prescriptions we currently get through "patient assistance programs" from some of the drug companies. If you're poor and don't have prescription coverage, many drugs are currently available directly from their makers. It's a lot of paperwork, but hey--free meds. This site has a list of most medications and a lot of the forms. It's worth it if you're like us; just do the paperwork and persevere.

So we don't have prescription coverage; we depend on samples from the docs and the Patient Assistance Programs.

Don't get me started on how angry I was when I found out how many millions of dollars Medicare was spending to promote Part D to all the people who didn't know about it or know how to apply for it...we were so close to the line that they could've just taken a small percentage of those marketing dollars and pushed who knows how many of us borderline income types over the line and given us coverage.

But hey, at least we HAVE basic health coverage, for what it's worth. I mean, a *few* doctors still accept Medicare. How many Americans don't have any health coverage at all?

--> Nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2005, the latest government data available.
--> The number of uninsured rose 1.3 million between 2004 and 2005 and has increased by almost 7 million people since 2000.
--> The large majority of the uninsured (80 percent) are native or naturalized citizens.

http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml

As for Medicaid...that's another sorry story. Here in Michigan we weren't eligible for that either. As for social services in general, Michigan is pretty lousy, but then again it's in pretty sad condition with its 7.6% unemployment rate (that's a full 1% higher than any other state in the nation, by the way).

Tune in again for more kvetching, whining, griping, bellyaching, and cats...