Crazy med cost revisited

Blood-pressure and kidney meds separately are pretty cheap, at a few cents a day, but the pill treating both, in what I hope is my remaining time, I calculate will have set me back $32,000

(Not a typo, it's thirty-two thousand dollars)

Incidentally it's called "Bystolic," which stands for "Beyond systolic" or Nebivolol, with respect to its cost, "Not beyond involuntarily laughing out loud"

However I was astounded but relieved when my Better Half advised that the 10 mg tab cost the same as the 5 mg, for a lifetime investment of only $16,000. Maybe, I suggested, we could buy a 20-mg tab and cut it in half but she responded that wouldn't be fair to the insurance company

Come on now, girls!

So you ask, what part of its cost is covered? None. It's against the policy of U.S. insurance firms to cover the cost of the most effective nostrums, especially for a pre-existing condition

Now, except for hypertension I'm a remarkably healthy old fellow but how about the typical patient my age treating ten different diseases, supposing many pills not so easily broken into halfs or thirds, that's a lifetime outlay upward of five-hundfred thousand dollars before inflation

This is all on top of an immensely complex, diffuse, uncoordinated bureaucratic system requiring the old guy to drive 15 miles to Walgreens twice a week, at $2 a mile bringing the old coot's his cumulative lifetime disbursement between one and two million dollars

Two dollars a mile--don't laugh. Thirty years ago in Los angeles it was 50 cents, which inflation approximately doubles every 15 years

The idea of euthanasia notwithstanding, clearly the cost of medical care will have to be distributed amongst all of us-- "Socialized Medicine"--inevitable