New Year's here. Are we ready?

Well, here we are on the eve of the government's new Medicare drug prescription plan. Ooh, this is gonna be fun!

Medicare has set up emergency plans for seniors who, through government SNAFU's, will find themselves without prescription coverage on January 1st. That is, Medicare/Medicaid is preparing for a disaster for the 6.5 million of the poorest and most vulnerable beneficiaries because they will lose their existing drug coverage, currently provided through the Medicaid program. Let me repeat that,the government is ready to treat those without drug coverage under the new program as a "disaster" and we all know from Katrina how the government deals with a disaster.

Medicare/Medicaid director, Mark McClellan, says he's confident that won't happen. Dada has to ponder why his name, Mark McClellan, sounds remarkably like press secretary's Scott McClellan--couldn't be they're related or something? And one is also given to wonder what Director McClellan's qualifications to lead Medicare/Medicaid are. Perhaps he was the resident pro at the Las Colinas Polo Club of Dallas, Texas or something? (No angry comments please, that was merely sarcasm. For McClellan's qualifications, Google him.)

But that aside, McClellan assures nervous folks he has fallback systems in place. He assures recipients that those "switching from Medicaid to Medicare drug coverage should find themselves better off."

Let's hope that's the case because nervous folks like Andrew Kotz of Chicago is one of those disabled people who only qualified for Medicare this fall and didn't qualify for the new plan. He's not in the database of those qualified under the new plan. He's not alone.

So it will be interesting to see. I hope this transition goes smoothly as our Medicare director assures us because Dada has flashbacks hearing stories like these. To the Reagan era, when government cutbacks in Medicaid killed the sister of a co-worker when her dialysis treatments were cut in half. She died, which leads me to ponder how many other's lives were cut short to streamline budget efficiencies towards smaller government.

One also must remember who the real beneficiaries of the new prescription plan are--the pharmas who wrote it.

And let's face it, DC pols aren't too concerned about a horde of angry bedridden and wheelchaired citizens "marching" on D.C. armed with crutches instead of weapons. With $1500/month drug "habits", they can't afford guns anyway. And, even more sadly, many of them can't even march.