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Garry Barker’s Head Of The Holler |
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Kentucky author Garry Barker was born in Otway, Ohio, in 1943, grew up in Elliott and Fleming Counties of Kentucky, graduated from Berea College and worked as an arts administrator and writer until he retired from Morehead State University. Barker lives at Bald Hill in Fleming County and is publisher of the Flemingsburg Gazette. He is the author of 10 published books and of “Head of the Holler,” a newspaper column that has run in regional newspapers since 1988. This site is columns, fun or fanciful, angry or sentimental, always concise and clear and related to rural Kentucky. Enjoy. Agree. Disagree. Respond. Comments are always welcome. Send your e-mails to headoftheholler@hotmail.com |
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I now have the dubious distinction of being among the barely four percent of older Americans on Medicare prescription insurance who have crossed over the infamous “donut hole,” the gap in coverage that most of us face each year. That means I’ve paid out about $4,000 from my own pocket for medicines not covered by the ill-conceived plan the Republican Party designed for us a few years back. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell often takes credit for the Medicare prescription coverage, one more reason I’d like to see the senator voted out of office. I also continued to pay the monthly insurance premium during the gap in coverage. I’m now broke and eligible for what they call “Catastrophic Coverage.” But just until the end of December. Then it all starts over. The last time I ranked so high in national percentages was back in high school, 1960, when I scored in the top one percent nationally on the National Merit Scholarship tests. I didn’t get any money for that, either. The Democrats keep promising some relief for seniors on Medicare prescription coverage, and for that reason alone I’d vote for the health care reform legislation now in Congress. Nobody really knows how well the proposed plan would work, but it couldn’t be much worse than what we’ve got. Millions of Americans now have no medical insurance coverage at all, and the rest of us pay too much for too little coverage. None of the reforms actually address the real problem, the escalating cost of modern medical treatment. If the price of gasoline had gone up as fast as the cost of medical treatment, we’d now be paying about $15 for a gallon of unleaded. Of course, either insurance or the government would be paying part of the cost of filling up. We are almost all over-tested, to pay for the expensive new machines all hospitals and clinics now have, and we all pay the pharmaceutical companies about 10 times what we should for the medications we take. Yesterday I paid $178 for a month’s supply of Spiriva, a breathing medicine. Serevent costs about the same, Flomax is about $150, and the antibiotic I had to take last month was $258 for 20 pills. Other medicines are much more expensive, just because the companies can get away with it. Nothing I’ve read or heard about in the new proposed legislation addresses the cost of anything except insurance, totally ignoring the real problems we face. Containing medical costs is more important than insurance. But, that’d be expecting too much from elected officials. As I proposed some time ago, a mass lynching of the House and Senate members would do more good than anything. And we might get the president’s attention and get him to control his underlings who are tossing everything but the kitchen sink into the health care reform legislation. Even worse donut holes may come out of this plan, and those of you who are not seniors may learn what it’s like. I’m all for health care reform. Not just insurance reform. But if what we’ve got is a step in the right direction, maybe it’s worth the gamble. I’m living proof that you can cross over the gap and come out alive.
Garry Barker is the author of Head of the Holler: Volume 1, from Wind Publications. Order at http://windpub.com/books/HeadOfTheHoller.htm or from Amazon.com © 2009 |
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HERE NOW from Wind Publications! Head of the Holler, Volume 1, a collection of columns spanning the first 10 years, finally available in book form. Starting with the very first column written for a monthly newspaper and counting down a decade, Garry Barker’s observations on the world around him in rural Kentucky have entertained newspaper readers since the late 1980s. . The 160 page paperback is $15 plus tax and shipping. Order from Wind Publications or any online bookseller. |