The Terrible Trio

Many seniors these days are pissing and moaning about their increasing costs for Medicare, or, as too many like to call it, Obamacare, blaming Barack Obama and this administration for all the fiscal shortcomings of our health program. I say, look at the exploding charges by doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. Look also at the high cost to Medicare for maintaining the health of seniors who are more prone to expensive illnesses and surgeries and monthly prescriptions than the junior populace. I know what it costs because I’m one of those expensive seniors. I’ve tried to approximate how much I’ve dipped into Medicare in the past six years, six years in which I’ve had a multitude of medical problems. I’ve had six surgeries to excise thirty-three separate squamous cell cancers from my legs. For six years I’ve been monitored for a condition called myelodysplasia. For six years I’ve been monitored for an abdominal aneurism. I’ve had two series of radiation on my left leg, both of which resulted in radiation wounds. I’ve had two years of weekly care at the wound center, forty sessions in a hyperbaric unit. I spent six days in the hospital for a kidney blockage, followed by surgery to place a stent. My prescription cost to Medicare in six years is about $18,000. Altogether in the last six years, I’ve cost Medicare approximately $138,000, or $23,000 a year. And because we’re almost never apprised of what the Terrible Trio is charging beyond what we pay, I’m certain I’ve underestimated these costs by as much as 100%.

So, pissing and moaning seniors, look to your own infirmities as part of the cause of rising medical costs, rising Medicare premiums. And please stop pissing and moaning. We seniors piss enough throughout the night, and we moan enough over all our aches and pains and infirmities.