Thank you, taxpayers, for the $42,214 for my father’s medications for the month. No, it’s not a typo. No, it’s not for doctor visits, or hospital stays, or our in-home nurses, or anything else — just a month’s drugs. No, it’s not a “full retail” price that gets discounted by some magic trick at the pharmacy, or by some voodoo between the manufacturer, the benefit broker and Medicare. No sir. You taxpayers actually wrote that check. For October.
My 88-year-old father takes the meds for dementia, thyroid issues and a years-long battle with prostate cancer. My father can’t think, speak or read. He can’t hear much. He still wanders around the house a little, bent over at discomforting angles looking vacant, uncomfortable and unhappy. This may go on for years as he waits to die.
If my father could thank you for the $42,000, I’m not at all sure that he would, because that’s who he is, or was. If he could speak at all, he would tell you he has lived a full and rewarding life. He would not tell you he had any expectation of every man, woman and child writing that check each month. He would tell you the difference between his life and death is now an abstraction. I know because I know him. My father, a very practical and exceedingly resourceful man, would have no part of it. But my father can’t make his own decisions any longer.
Actually, no one else can make them either. The one-of-a-kind medical-industrial complex this country has built will make his decisions for him. The rest of us are just spectators.
— Bob Lacher
Palmer
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