GOT COVID? DOGE GOT YOUR PAXLOVID!

 

You heard it here first:  Medicare no longer covers the one drug which actually stops COVID virus from replicating and is highly effective, orally, to rescue patients from the prospect of a respirator: Paxlovid.

No, some things are still available and not removed from reach:  not intravenous bleach, chloroquine or Ivermectin: Mad Dog has not inquired about coverage for those. But then again, unless you are a horse with worms or have a strong death wish, those are no great loss.

Go on Google and you will be told by Google AI Paxlovid is still covered by Medicare Part D (the drug part) but, for once, AI has failed us. 

How does Mad Dog know?

Actual non AI experience in what is now called "actual life," or AL for "actual life" or "alternative life."

Ah, it's New Hampshire, where we live free, and now may have to opt for the second half of that slogan: die.

A New Hampshire chorus of mostly 70 and 80 something women traveled to Scotland and did a number of concerts over the course of June 21-June 28, and about 3 days into the tour, one member tripped and fell, and had to be seen by Scotland's excellent National Health Service, where they found her to be febrile and alertly tested her for COVID, and she was positive. She wore a mask and sat in the back of the bus, and was otherwise isolated/ostracized, but clearly she had been infectious before she was discovered and by the time the chorus of eighty members got home, 45% of the chorus was coughing or simply tested and found to be positive.

Now, this is a pretty robust group of sixty, seventy and eighty year old women, who chose Scotland so they could hike up mountains between performances, but if you are COVID positive, coughing and symptomatic, over 65, Paxlovid is the safest thing to do, and while it has been underused it's well proven to prevent a respirator fate.

So, these women, who communicate avidly electronically, started seeing doctors and getting prescriptions for Paxlovid. Ah, the day is saved!

Or not.

Turns out when they went to the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions every one of them, some who live in Maine, were told the cost is now $700 (for a prescription we can all remember was $50 when Biden was in office.)

Many, not being women of great means, went home without the Paxlovid to face their fate.

So there you have the essence of government efficiency! DOGE has struck again, and this time into the homeland. 

And these are mostly White women, returning from a decidedly not "shit-hole" country with their American passports, so you might think Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk or RFK JR would not have them in their sites.

Of course, neither New Hampshire nor Maine voted for Trump, so there's that--but Maine has a Republican Senator. 

And RFK JR has intimated that if they just ate right and stayed young, none of this would ever have happened.

And really, what could be more efficient than not treating this group? Most of them are on Medicare, some getting Social Security, and some will ultimately need nursing homes, so if these folks die now, in the immortal formulation of Congressman Norman from South Carolina, well, that's a cost saving!

PS: A word on "coverage." 

One woman was told Medicare did "cover" Paxlovid, which costs $2,000, but her "copay" went from $50 last year to $700. So is that really "coverage"? 

There really is no "cost" for any drug now. A doctor who finds a bloated Ixodes tick on him after working in the garden and writes himself a prescription for doxycycline discovers the cost is $1,500. He calls his own doctor who calls in the Rx and the bill is $1.50. So what is the cost of doxycycline or any drug, for that matter?