By Tim Sanders

January 2006 is fast approaching. As I write this, millions of elderly and disabled Americans are feverishly hammering their computer keyboards, calculating their drug costs and trying to determine just which Medicare prescription drug plan is best for them. Those without computers are feverishly hammering their local pharmacists. I have been struggling with the Medicare problem myself, and as a public service will happily pass along what I have learned. You should follow my instructions carefully, if only out of morbid curiosity.
 

1. Before you start, eat a hearty breakfast and have a little sip of gin, purely for medicinal purposes. You will need it to fortify yourself.

2. Get a bag full of prescription bottles. If they are empty, they are great for storing fish hooks, swivels and lead sinkers. If not, take a clean sheet of paper and make a list of your drugs and dosages. Remember that old adage, "453,592 milligrams are a pound the world around." Use extra paper and erasers as needed. Have another nip of gin.

3. Once you’ve completed your list, take a lunch break and a nap. Edison took naps frequently, and swore he invented the radio without using any pharmaceuticals at all, regardless of what Marconi may have claimed.

4. What follows requires a computer. If you are over 55 and don’t have a computer, don’t run out and purchase one. I’ve had a computer for years, and no longer fear it ... much. But if you are an old fossil like me and don’t already have a computer, learning to use one at your age will cause more problems than it will solve, and require even more medication. Stop reading now and go harass your pharmacist.

5. If you have a computer, go to the www.medicare.gov website. Look at that first page carefully. Notice all the terms with which you are unfamiliar, like "Landscape of Local Plans, Demo of the Prescription Drug Plan Finder, Family First Toolkit, Benefits Checkup RX, Formulary Finder, and Fun Things You Can Do With Fulminate of Mercury and Your Futon." Even if you think you may indeed have a formulary lying around the house somewhere, you probably wouldn’t be interested in using a formulary finder to locate it. Take a Tylenol. Take two.

6. Flip a coin. If you choose to visit the "Landscape of Local Plans" site, you will not find pine trees, rippling streams, or amber waves of grain. This landscape does not even have shrubbery. Interestingly enough, the Alabama Landscape does have something called a Stand Alone Plan, which I believe is for Medicare recipients who are both a) sober and b) ambulatory.

7. Go to the www.bassfiles.net/parachute.swf website. You’ll have to type it in yourself, because there are no links on the Medicare site. It has no Medicare drug prescription information, but it does contain a swell parachute game which allows you to toss Daffy Duck out of a plane and land him on a bull’s eye target for 100 points. There is a flagpole, and a flag which indicates wind direction. I have personally scored 700 points out of a possible 1000. (Incidentally, if you don’t open Daffy’s chute, he leaves an impressive duck-shaped hole in the ground where he lands.) There are excellent sound effects. If the Medicare website used airplanes and ducks, it would be much easier to follow.

8. Sip some more gin, and return to the Medicare site. You will find a link there–maybe two–which will provide very detailed information about premiums, deductibles, payments, variable co-payments, formulary levels, tiers, generic vs. brand name drugs, capital gains taxes, the prime interest rate, the International Monetary System, foreclosures, metric conversion tables, the difference between common and natural logarithms, and how all of this, along with your astrological sign, the number of letters in your last name, the length of your left index finger, and recent volcanic activity affects whether you will need a MA or a PDP plan. You will not know the difference between the two, but you will learn that one, or possibly both, can involve several other confusing acronyms, like HMO, PPO, PFFS, CVS, HTML, URL, LOL, AEIOU and sometimes Y. You will come to despise those damnable initials, but will forge ahead anyway, because you don’t know the meaning of the word "quit."

9. In small print on page 14, subsection 32, paragraph 9, under "Things to Consider," you will learn about the "donut hole gap." The donut hole gap is a metaphor for that point at which Medicare will stop paying for your prescriptions until you’ve taken out a second mortgage on the farm, after which they’ll jump right back in there, sort of. The "donut hole" in question amounts to around $3000. I guess that is what wealthy politicians, physicians, and insurance company executives spend on their donut holes, and they’re the guys who came up with this system. The meaning of the word "quit" is now creeping into your subconscious. Fix yourself some coffee. If coffee makes you jittery, add gin.

10. You will find another link–I forget which one–with a swell gray map of the United States. On this map Alaska is located only a few miles north of American Samoa, and Tennessee is where you thought Rhode Island was supposed to be, but that is because the map was put together by a Senate subcommittee. Even so, if you graduated from high school before 1970 you will probably need no help locating your own state on that map. When you click your cursor on that state, you will learn just which plans are available in your area, and also learn why a cursor is called a cursor. Good luck, there are hundreds of plans, and all of them will require your prescription list. Curse on. You will require more gin.

11. This will be a good place to stop, take a large dose of one of your stronger prescription medications, and check your e-mail. With any luck, someone will have forwarded one of those vitally important messages about that new e-mail virus which attacks your hard drive and eats your computer from the inside out until your tower, your keyboard, your monitor, your mouse, your cat, your desk and most of your office furniture are gone–all lost in cyberspace. If not, you could play spider solitaire for awhile. I have achieved a score of 1206 on the novice level, which uses just spades, but I plan to move up to the intermediate level, using both spades and hearts, any day now. Have some more gin. Hey, all work and no play ... I forget the rest, but I’m sure you know it.

12. Lastly, wait a few hours before you visit your pharmacist for help. You are in no condition to drive, or operate heavy machinery. Tell your wife she will be unable to use the computer until you replace that broken monitor. Be sure to hide the brick.