boutons
11-14-2005, 10:02 PM
... haven't politicized, compromised, and fucked up?
Seriously, can anybody point to evidence that the US govt has been improved or even run at the same level as when the Repugs moved into control?
=======================================
The New York Times
November 14, 2005
F.D.A.'s Rejection of Contraceptive Is Questioned
By MARIA NEWMAN
Correction Appended
The Food and Drug Administration did not follow its usual procedures in rejecting an application for over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B, the investigating arm of Congress found today.
The Government Accountability Office also said in its 57-page report that there were questions about whether top officials of the F.D.A. made the decision to reject the application for over-the-counter sales of the drug, which is opposed by some religious conservatives, even before its own advisory committee had issued its recommendation on the matter.
Several legislators and scientists have complained that the F.D.A. was putting politics ahead of science in its handling of the contraceptive, which can be used as emergency, morning-after contraception.
The G.A.O. said in its report that "the Plan B decision was not typical of the other 67 proposed" changes from prescription to over-the-counter sales that the agency received from 1994 through 2004.
The agency, which was charged with examining how the decision to reject the application was made, and how it compared to the decisions of other requested changes from prescription to over-the-counter sales, does not make recommendations about what action the F.D.A. or Congress should make in the matter.
But critics of the decision used the report as the basis to ask that the F.D.A. decision be revisited.
"We are deeply opposed to this subversion of science," Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, in a letter signed by 17 other lawmakers.
They urged Mr. Leavitt, who oversees the F.D.A., to intervene to assure that a pending reconsideration of the pill's status "is based on the best available science instead of ideology."
Two Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington, issued a joint statement saying the report showed that the rejection of Plan B "was a politically motivated decision that came down from the highest levels at the F.D.A."
In May 2004, the F.D.A. rejected an application by Barr Laboratories to sell its Plan B contraceptive over the counter without restrictions, saying the company's studies did not include enough girls younger than 16.
This came after the agency's own nonprescription drugs advisory committee and its review staff recommended approval.
Last month, a consultant to that advisory panel, Dr. Frank Davidoff, editor emeritus of the Annals of Internal Medicine, resigned in protest of the agency's handling of the Plan B contraceptive, saying it was putting politics over science. In August, the top women's health official at agency, Susan Wood, also quit in protest over the Plan B decisions.
The G.A.O. report suggested that top F.D.A. officials had discussed turning down the application for over-the-counter sales of Plan B as early as December 2003, even though its advisory panels had not yet weighed in.
It also said that in Barr's application to switch Plan B from prescription to over the counter sales, or O.T.C,, as the agency calls it, "F.D.A.'s high level management was more involved in the review of Plan B than in those of other O.T.C. switch applications."
In its response to the G.A.O.'s draft report, Jane Woodcock, deputy commissioner for operations at the F.D.A., said it was "inaccurate" to suggest that a decision had already been made to reject the application before the review committees weighed in. She said, however, that "it was entirely normal" for top officials "to convey to the review division their concerns regarding the application."
She also said the Plan B case had attracted a high level of "public interest," including two citizen petitions. Top level officials were involved in the review process, she said, but only to the extent that it was "typical for high-profile, controversial applications."
Correction: An earlier version of this online article, about a report on the Food and Drug Administration's action on an emergency contraceptive pill, used an outdated name for the Congressional agency that issued the report. It is the Government Accountability Office; the agency changed its name from the General Accounting Office in July 2004.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
===================================
November 14, 2005
New York Times Editorial
Stonewalling the Katrina Victims
Public outrage is clearly growing over the federal government's woefully inadequate program for housing the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Last week a group of survivors filed the first of what are likely to be several lawsuits alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to live up to its responsibilities. The recovery effort has been subject to blistering criticism from conservative, nonpartisan and liberal groups alike.
The same basic question is this: Why did the Bush administration focus on trailer parks built by FEMA - which is actually not a housing agency - instead of giving the lead role to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has so much experience on this issue?
Many, including the Brookings Institution and the conservative Heritage Foundation, urged the administration to switch on HUD's famously successful Section 8 program, which gives families government vouchers to find decent housing in the private real estate market. That program worked well after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. But the White House - which seems less interested in conservative philosophy about how to make government programs work than with simply cutting the amount of money that gets spent on poor people - has been working feverishly to cripple HUD and destroy the Section 8 voucher program for years.
So the administration rigged up a hastily thought out program that is less flexible and less helpful than Section 8 - and confusing in the bargain. Still focused on tax cuts for the wealthy, the administration is apparently hoping that people who need housing will be frustrated by the difficult process of applying for federal relief dollars and simply give up and go away.
====================
The New York Times
November 13, 2005
Confusion Is Rife About Drug Plan as Sign-Up Nears
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - Enrollment in the new Medicare drug benefit begins in three days, but even with President Bush hailing the plan on Saturday as "the greatest advance in health care for seniors" in 40 years, large numbers of older Americans appear to be overwhelmed and confused by the choices they will have to make.
"I have a Ph.D., and it's too complicated to suit me," said William Q. Beard, 73, a retired chemist in Wichita, Kan., who takes eight prescription drugs, including several heart medicines. "I wonder how the vast majority of beneficiaries will handle this. I fervently wish that members of Congress had to deal with the same health care program we do."
Mr. Beard was interviewed at First United Methodist Church in Wichita, where he and 100 other members of an adult Sunday school class recently received a two-hour explanation of the drug benefit from a state insurance counselor.
Confusion was a dominant theme at education and counseling sessions held over the last two weeks in Wichita and in Glen Burnie, Md.; Fairfax, Va.; Urbana, Ohio; and Santa Rosa, Calif.
"The whole thing is hopelessly complicated," said Pauline H. Olney, 74, a retired nurse who attended a seminar at a hotel in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.
The drug benefit, estimated to cost $724 billion over 10 years, is the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965 and is often described as Mr. Bush's biggest achievement in domestic policy.
Bush administration officials and other backers of the plan say the new program can cut drug costs in half for a typical beneficiary, to $1,120 a year, with much greater savings for low-income patients. In his radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush said, "If you or someone you love depends on Medicare, I urge you to learn about the new choices you have so you can make a decision and enroll."
Beneficiaries around the country are flocking to Medicare workshops, where experts present them with complicated descriptions of drug formularies, "tiered co-payments," "creditable coverage" and "true out-of-pocket costs," and caution about penalties for late enrollment.
In most states, beneficiaries have a choice of more than three dozen prescription drug plans. Premiums, deductibles, co-payments and covered drugs vary widely. Many retirees also have other options: getting drug coverage through former employers or through Medicare-managed care plans.
In Kansas, Medicare beneficiaries have a choice of 40 prescription drug plans charging premiums from $9.48 a month to $67.88 a month.
Gene D. Peterson, 71, who attended the session at First United Methodist, said: "The government asks us to sign up for a plan, but we have to figure out which drugs are covered by which of the 40 plans. For the average person, that's almost impossible. It's much too complicated."
Mr. Peterson is far from alone. In a survey issued this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, only 35 percent of people 65 and older said they understood the new drug benefit. Those who said they understood it were more likely to have a favorable impression of it.
Asked about beneficiaries' confusion, Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said: "Health care is complicated. We acknowledge that. Lots of things in life are complicated: filling out a tax return, registering your car, getting cable television. It is going to take time for seniors to become comfortable with the drug benefit."
Paulette Dibbern, a retired State Farm insurance agent in Wichita, said the government was not emphasizing an important fact about the new benefit: "You must go out and shop for a drug plan and buy this coverage from an insurance company."
In principle, Mrs. Dibbern said, drug coverage for older Americans is a good idea. But in practice, she said, the new program is immensely frustrating. "Federal officials seem to go on the philosophy, 'Why keep it simple when you can gum up the works?' " she said.
Mendell F. Butler, 76, a longtime member of First United Methodist, said he wished people could pay $20 a month for a simple Medicare drug plan, "without searching out all these different companies you've got to buy it from."
Mr. Butler said he was deeply concerned about people who did not have the capacity to understand the decisions they had to make. "With the new program," he said, "you go home at night, and your mind is totally boggled, so confused that you think, 'Golly, is it worth it?' "
Mr. Leavitt said beneficiaries could get help on a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-633-4227, and on a Web site, www.medicare.gov, which includes a "plan finder" to sort through the options.
Beneficiaries understand that Parts A and B of Medicare cover hospital care and doctors' services, and many want to know why Medicare does not have its own drug plan. The new prescription drug plans, though heavily subsidized by Medicare, are marketed and administered by private insurers like Aetna, Humana, PacifiCare and UnitedHealth Group.
The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress chose this approach for two reasons. They firmly believe that competition among private plans will hold down costs, and they do not want the government to specify which drugs will be covered.
Brian D. Caswell, a former president of the Kansas Pharmacists Association, said he spent two to three hours a day explaining the Medicare drug benefit to customers at his store in rural Baxter Springs. He encouraged them to take a look at the new program.
But Mr. Caswell said: "The program is so poorly designed and is creating so much confusion that it's having a negative effect on most beneficiaries. It's making people cynical about the whole process - the new program, the government's help."
Robert W. Nyquist, a pharmacist in Lindsborg, Kan., said customers had told him: "This is just beyond me. I can't decipher which drug plan is cheapest."
Suzi Lenker, who coordinates insurance counseling for the Kansas Department on Aging, said that "some people were in tears" at a recent session she held for 140 Medicare beneficiaries in McPherson. "They did not like this newfangled change," Ms. Lenker said.
Bush administration officials said Medicare drug plans were offering more benefits at lower cost than had been expected.
But that does not mean that a person's local pharmacy will be in every plan.
"In some rural areas," Ms. Lenker reported, "beneficiaries say: 'There are 40 Medicare drug plans to choose from, but my pharmacy takes only one or two plans. How does that give me choice?' "
Mr. Nyquist said he was doing business with only one prescription drug plan, Community Care Rx, offered by MemberHealth in cooperation with the National Community Pharmacists Association. If Medicare beneficiaries choose another plan, he said, they cannot get their drugs at his store, the only one in Lindsborg.
"We are not trying to deny access to people," Mr. Nyquist said. "We chose to do business with Community Care Rx because, in my opinion, it is the plan most friendly to senior citizens."
Food shoppers tend to like having a large variety of products and brands, but many Medicare beneficiaries are perplexed by the prospect of an insurance supermarket.
"In a grocery store, we know the products," said Irwin Samet, 74, of Fairfax, Va. "With prescription drug plans, we don't know the products. We are guessing."
After a two-hour class at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, Mr. Samet used a Yiddish word to describe his state of mind. "Farmisht," he said. "Mixed up. All of us here are mixed up."
In Urbana last week, more than 150 people showed up for a Medicare seminar held by the Ohio Insurance Department.
Joseph Rizzutti, 68, said he had found the seminar helpful, but would have to do "a lot of research and homework" to choose plans for himself and his 88-year-old mother, who has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a nursing home.
The Medicare handbook, sent to all beneficiaries, lists 43 drug plans available in Ohio.
Edith L. Kohn, 81, who worked as a cashier in a grocery store in Urbana for two decades, said she had been studying her Medicare options for a month.
"I feel like I'm just about ready to make a decision, signing up for the plan offered by AARP," Mrs. Kohn said. "But the government has made this hard, and it should not be that way. I don't understand why they have to make things so darn complicated."
Even after attending the seminar, Raymond L. Middlesworth, 70, a retired truck driver from Urbana, said he was baffled.
"I've tried reading the Medicare book about the drug plan," Mr. Middlesworth said, "but I couldn't make sense of it. This is the biggest mess that Medicare has ever put us through."
Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from Santa Rosa, Calif., for this article, and Albert Salvato from Urbana, Ohio.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
=================
I'm sure all of you have read about the "donut" in the new Medicare, where you get helped initially, then you have to pay it all yourself (hoping you can avoid bankruptcy and afford to eat), and then you get some more help. Confusing as hell.
Seriously, can anybody point to evidence that the US govt has been improved or even run at the same level as when the Repugs moved into control?
=======================================
The New York Times
November 14, 2005
F.D.A.'s Rejection of Contraceptive Is Questioned
By MARIA NEWMAN
Correction Appended
The Food and Drug Administration did not follow its usual procedures in rejecting an application for over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B, the investigating arm of Congress found today.
The Government Accountability Office also said in its 57-page report that there were questions about whether top officials of the F.D.A. made the decision to reject the application for over-the-counter sales of the drug, which is opposed by some religious conservatives, even before its own advisory committee had issued its recommendation on the matter.
Several legislators and scientists have complained that the F.D.A. was putting politics ahead of science in its handling of the contraceptive, which can be used as emergency, morning-after contraception.
The G.A.O. said in its report that "the Plan B decision was not typical of the other 67 proposed" changes from prescription to over-the-counter sales that the agency received from 1994 through 2004.
The agency, which was charged with examining how the decision to reject the application was made, and how it compared to the decisions of other requested changes from prescription to over-the-counter sales, does not make recommendations about what action the F.D.A. or Congress should make in the matter.
But critics of the decision used the report as the basis to ask that the F.D.A. decision be revisited.
"We are deeply opposed to this subversion of science," Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, in a letter signed by 17 other lawmakers.
They urged Mr. Leavitt, who oversees the F.D.A., to intervene to assure that a pending reconsideration of the pill's status "is based on the best available science instead of ideology."
Two Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington, issued a joint statement saying the report showed that the rejection of Plan B "was a politically motivated decision that came down from the highest levels at the F.D.A."
In May 2004, the F.D.A. rejected an application by Barr Laboratories to sell its Plan B contraceptive over the counter without restrictions, saying the company's studies did not include enough girls younger than 16.
This came after the agency's own nonprescription drugs advisory committee and its review staff recommended approval.
Last month, a consultant to that advisory panel, Dr. Frank Davidoff, editor emeritus of the Annals of Internal Medicine, resigned in protest of the agency's handling of the Plan B contraceptive, saying it was putting politics over science. In August, the top women's health official at agency, Susan Wood, also quit in protest over the Plan B decisions.
The G.A.O. report suggested that top F.D.A. officials had discussed turning down the application for over-the-counter sales of Plan B as early as December 2003, even though its advisory panels had not yet weighed in.
It also said that in Barr's application to switch Plan B from prescription to over the counter sales, or O.T.C,, as the agency calls it, "F.D.A.'s high level management was more involved in the review of Plan B than in those of other O.T.C. switch applications."
In its response to the G.A.O.'s draft report, Jane Woodcock, deputy commissioner for operations at the F.D.A., said it was "inaccurate" to suggest that a decision had already been made to reject the application before the review committees weighed in. She said, however, that "it was entirely normal" for top officials "to convey to the review division their concerns regarding the application."
She also said the Plan B case had attracted a high level of "public interest," including two citizen petitions. Top level officials were involved in the review process, she said, but only to the extent that it was "typical for high-profile, controversial applications."
Correction: An earlier version of this online article, about a report on the Food and Drug Administration's action on an emergency contraceptive pill, used an outdated name for the Congressional agency that issued the report. It is the Government Accountability Office; the agency changed its name from the General Accounting Office in July 2004.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
===================================
November 14, 2005
New York Times Editorial
Stonewalling the Katrina Victims
Public outrage is clearly growing over the federal government's woefully inadequate program for housing the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Last week a group of survivors filed the first of what are likely to be several lawsuits alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to live up to its responsibilities. The recovery effort has been subject to blistering criticism from conservative, nonpartisan and liberal groups alike.
The same basic question is this: Why did the Bush administration focus on trailer parks built by FEMA - which is actually not a housing agency - instead of giving the lead role to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has so much experience on this issue?
Many, including the Brookings Institution and the conservative Heritage Foundation, urged the administration to switch on HUD's famously successful Section 8 program, which gives families government vouchers to find decent housing in the private real estate market. That program worked well after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. But the White House - which seems less interested in conservative philosophy about how to make government programs work than with simply cutting the amount of money that gets spent on poor people - has been working feverishly to cripple HUD and destroy the Section 8 voucher program for years.
So the administration rigged up a hastily thought out program that is less flexible and less helpful than Section 8 - and confusing in the bargain. Still focused on tax cuts for the wealthy, the administration is apparently hoping that people who need housing will be frustrated by the difficult process of applying for federal relief dollars and simply give up and go away.
====================
The New York Times
November 13, 2005
Confusion Is Rife About Drug Plan as Sign-Up Nears
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - Enrollment in the new Medicare drug benefit begins in three days, but even with President Bush hailing the plan on Saturday as "the greatest advance in health care for seniors" in 40 years, large numbers of older Americans appear to be overwhelmed and confused by the choices they will have to make.
"I have a Ph.D., and it's too complicated to suit me," said William Q. Beard, 73, a retired chemist in Wichita, Kan., who takes eight prescription drugs, including several heart medicines. "I wonder how the vast majority of beneficiaries will handle this. I fervently wish that members of Congress had to deal with the same health care program we do."
Mr. Beard was interviewed at First United Methodist Church in Wichita, where he and 100 other members of an adult Sunday school class recently received a two-hour explanation of the drug benefit from a state insurance counselor.
Confusion was a dominant theme at education and counseling sessions held over the last two weeks in Wichita and in Glen Burnie, Md.; Fairfax, Va.; Urbana, Ohio; and Santa Rosa, Calif.
"The whole thing is hopelessly complicated," said Pauline H. Olney, 74, a retired nurse who attended a seminar at a hotel in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.
The drug benefit, estimated to cost $724 billion over 10 years, is the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965 and is often described as Mr. Bush's biggest achievement in domestic policy.
Bush administration officials and other backers of the plan say the new program can cut drug costs in half for a typical beneficiary, to $1,120 a year, with much greater savings for low-income patients. In his radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush said, "If you or someone you love depends on Medicare, I urge you to learn about the new choices you have so you can make a decision and enroll."
Beneficiaries around the country are flocking to Medicare workshops, where experts present them with complicated descriptions of drug formularies, "tiered co-payments," "creditable coverage" and "true out-of-pocket costs," and caution about penalties for late enrollment.
In most states, beneficiaries have a choice of more than three dozen prescription drug plans. Premiums, deductibles, co-payments and covered drugs vary widely. Many retirees also have other options: getting drug coverage through former employers or through Medicare-managed care plans.
In Kansas, Medicare beneficiaries have a choice of 40 prescription drug plans charging premiums from $9.48 a month to $67.88 a month.
Gene D. Peterson, 71, who attended the session at First United Methodist, said: "The government asks us to sign up for a plan, but we have to figure out which drugs are covered by which of the 40 plans. For the average person, that's almost impossible. It's much too complicated."
Mr. Peterson is far from alone. In a survey issued this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, only 35 percent of people 65 and older said they understood the new drug benefit. Those who said they understood it were more likely to have a favorable impression of it.
Asked about beneficiaries' confusion, Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said: "Health care is complicated. We acknowledge that. Lots of things in life are complicated: filling out a tax return, registering your car, getting cable television. It is going to take time for seniors to become comfortable with the drug benefit."
Paulette Dibbern, a retired State Farm insurance agent in Wichita, said the government was not emphasizing an important fact about the new benefit: "You must go out and shop for a drug plan and buy this coverage from an insurance company."
In principle, Mrs. Dibbern said, drug coverage for older Americans is a good idea. But in practice, she said, the new program is immensely frustrating. "Federal officials seem to go on the philosophy, 'Why keep it simple when you can gum up the works?' " she said.
Mendell F. Butler, 76, a longtime member of First United Methodist, said he wished people could pay $20 a month for a simple Medicare drug plan, "without searching out all these different companies you've got to buy it from."
Mr. Butler said he was deeply concerned about people who did not have the capacity to understand the decisions they had to make. "With the new program," he said, "you go home at night, and your mind is totally boggled, so confused that you think, 'Golly, is it worth it?' "
Mr. Leavitt said beneficiaries could get help on a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-633-4227, and on a Web site, www.medicare.gov, which includes a "plan finder" to sort through the options.
Beneficiaries understand that Parts A and B of Medicare cover hospital care and doctors' services, and many want to know why Medicare does not have its own drug plan. The new prescription drug plans, though heavily subsidized by Medicare, are marketed and administered by private insurers like Aetna, Humana, PacifiCare and UnitedHealth Group.
The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress chose this approach for two reasons. They firmly believe that competition among private plans will hold down costs, and they do not want the government to specify which drugs will be covered.
Brian D. Caswell, a former president of the Kansas Pharmacists Association, said he spent two to three hours a day explaining the Medicare drug benefit to customers at his store in rural Baxter Springs. He encouraged them to take a look at the new program.
But Mr. Caswell said: "The program is so poorly designed and is creating so much confusion that it's having a negative effect on most beneficiaries. It's making people cynical about the whole process - the new program, the government's help."
Robert W. Nyquist, a pharmacist in Lindsborg, Kan., said customers had told him: "This is just beyond me. I can't decipher which drug plan is cheapest."
Suzi Lenker, who coordinates insurance counseling for the Kansas Department on Aging, said that "some people were in tears" at a recent session she held for 140 Medicare beneficiaries in McPherson. "They did not like this newfangled change," Ms. Lenker said.
Bush administration officials said Medicare drug plans were offering more benefits at lower cost than had been expected.
But that does not mean that a person's local pharmacy will be in every plan.
"In some rural areas," Ms. Lenker reported, "beneficiaries say: 'There are 40 Medicare drug plans to choose from, but my pharmacy takes only one or two plans. How does that give me choice?' "
Mr. Nyquist said he was doing business with only one prescription drug plan, Community Care Rx, offered by MemberHealth in cooperation with the National Community Pharmacists Association. If Medicare beneficiaries choose another plan, he said, they cannot get their drugs at his store, the only one in Lindsborg.
"We are not trying to deny access to people," Mr. Nyquist said. "We chose to do business with Community Care Rx because, in my opinion, it is the plan most friendly to senior citizens."
Food shoppers tend to like having a large variety of products and brands, but many Medicare beneficiaries are perplexed by the prospect of an insurance supermarket.
"In a grocery store, we know the products," said Irwin Samet, 74, of Fairfax, Va. "With prescription drug plans, we don't know the products. We are guessing."
After a two-hour class at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, Mr. Samet used a Yiddish word to describe his state of mind. "Farmisht," he said. "Mixed up. All of us here are mixed up."
In Urbana last week, more than 150 people showed up for a Medicare seminar held by the Ohio Insurance Department.
Joseph Rizzutti, 68, said he had found the seminar helpful, but would have to do "a lot of research and homework" to choose plans for himself and his 88-year-old mother, who has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a nursing home.
The Medicare handbook, sent to all beneficiaries, lists 43 drug plans available in Ohio.
Edith L. Kohn, 81, who worked as a cashier in a grocery store in Urbana for two decades, said she had been studying her Medicare options for a month.
"I feel like I'm just about ready to make a decision, signing up for the plan offered by AARP," Mrs. Kohn said. "But the government has made this hard, and it should not be that way. I don't understand why they have to make things so darn complicated."
Even after attending the seminar, Raymond L. Middlesworth, 70, a retired truck driver from Urbana, said he was baffled.
"I've tried reading the Medicare book about the drug plan," Mr. Middlesworth said, "but I couldn't make sense of it. This is the biggest mess that Medicare has ever put us through."
Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from Santa Rosa, Calif., for this article, and Albert Salvato from Urbana, Ohio.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
=================
I'm sure all of you have read about the "donut" in the new Medicare, where you get helped initially, then you have to pay it all yourself (hoping you can avoid bankruptcy and afford to eat), and then you get some more help. Confusing as hell.