My good friend Michael is a tetrapalegic with horrible ulcers covering the majority of his posterior and as a result over many years of wound care treatments most of the flesh has been removed. He has one hip bone removed and has had his pelvis shaved. No sort of hip replacement device has been installed and thusly his upper thigh bone is "free floating" < causing all sorts of risks given that your femoral artery is near buy. His spinal cord when severed was not cut horizontally but split vertically allowing signals to still flow but robbing him of any use of one arm and anything from the chest down. Given this he feels extreme amounts of pain from the sores and just living in his day to day existence. For this he is given strong pain killers to allow him to have some sort of normal existence. More on that later. His mother, also a dear friend, is his primary care taker and it is a full time job. SO she can't work and is allotted 600 some odd dollars a month from social security (last year it was 700 some odd dollars but for some mysterious reason it was lowered this year) and he has had Medicare to help with his hospital bills and prescription costs. While this was in now way enough to live well they have managed quite well through these hard time.
Today when Ann went to pick up her sons pain medication she was informed as of the 30th of September Medicare would no longer pay for his prescription. Ann called me extremely ticked off and saying that she couldn't afford the $175.00 the drug now cost even though the state was supposed to help pay for his meds. What happened to this support no one has any idea. His coverage was cancelled with no notification of any kind leaving them to find out the hard and humiliating way. I was able to get the money and pay for the medicine and this month he doesn't have to suffer. Further evidence to me that our system is broken and those in charge don't care and would rather the people who are sick and in need just die off.
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