Medicare Stopgap Goes To Governor
With rapid speed, the Legislature this morning sent Governor Schwarzenegger a bill to step in and provide some temporary help for low-income and elderly Californians stuck in the Medicare reorganization quagmire.
The bill, AB 132, allocates up to $150 million to pay for prescription drugs that are supposed to be paid for by the federal Medicare program... but haven't been in the last three weeks since a new reform program took effect. The snafu has affected about a million patients in California.
AB 132 sailed through both the Assembly and Senate by lunchtime, and was on its way to the governor-- who, not coincidentally, was meeting in the state Capitol with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, who came to town to talk about the very same issue.
