Medicare Is a Worthless Investment

The Times is a lot prouder of the accomplishments of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) than it should be (“Medicare Victory Caps Senate Leader’s Rookie Year,” Nov. 27).

Just before he became majority leader, Frist was probably behind the insertion of a clause into the Homeland Security Act forgiving Eli Lilly & Co. for the egregious damage done by thimerosal [a vaccine preservative alleged to cause autism]. When later spotted by the public, this clause was removed, but how it got there remains a mystery. Frist is a medical doctor and Lilly had at least one ex-employee in the White House, but that is all anyone learned.

This Medicare overhaul was a piece of legislation most wanted by powerful conservatives. It will prove to be even more draconian than the USA Patriot Act. What are those gaps in coverage, as an example, if not to provide a time to die for the old and the halt, as drugs and care are suspended?

We should all be aware that the $125 billion the overhaul gives to HMOs provides nothing in the way of care or medicines. It’s a bribe, more or less, in hope that the HMOs will not dump their Medicare clients this time -- as they did last time.

Frist lines his own pockets with this provision of the new Medicare bill. His brother was a chief executive of HCA Inc. [the largest private hospital company in the U.S.], and his father founded this giant hospital chain, which has been caught defrauding Medicare. Now they can do it legally.

Tom Freeman

Pinon Hills

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Now that Medicare will be basically privatized and deregulated so that the drug companies and the HMOs can make more money from it and provide less service, we the taxpayers should have the option of opting out of the Medicare system. We should not have to pay Medicare taxes if we don’t want to use this losing health-care method.

All of my adult working life I have been paying money into this. Then, when I want to use it, I also have to pay a lot of money to use what I have been paying into all along. It is a worthless investment of my money. We should be able to opt out of paying for it and be able to receive all of the money we’ve paid in to use for our own health coverage rather than waste it on an increasingly worthless Medicare.

Peter Davison

Santa Monica

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The new Medicare bill is the first important step in the privatization of Medicare. It does give considerable crumbs to the elderly -- to fatten them enough to lead them to the profitably tender stockyards of the drug industry, insurance companies and the HMOs.

Roger Carasso

Northridge