Kidney patients need Medigap expansion
While my husband was on dialysis, and even since his kidney transplant, getting affordable coverage has felt impossible. If Medicare doesn’t cover something, we have to scramble to afford it, which was a massive challenge given his dialysis treatments got up to $15,000 and medications can cost $3,000 each month. This shouldn’t happen. We need lawmakers to pass bills that make coverage more accessible for patients, like the Jack Reynolds Memorial Medigap Expansion Act. It would help make Medigap coverage more accessible to dialysis patients under 65, so they don’t go through what my husband and I have.
Patients can’t choose to not get these treatments or not take certain medications. They need these to stay alive, and too many patients aren’t able to get the coverage they need. I hope Representative Hank Johnson and our other members of Congress join Representative Sanford Bishop in sponsoring this bill.
LYNNETTE PERRYMAN, LILBURN
Sackler family not the only ones to blame for opioid crisis
Certainly the Sacklers and Purdue Pharmaceuticals are getting their due.
But not the doctors and patients who were knowingly complicit. For we physicians, medical school taught us how addicting these narcotics are. When Purdue’s “detail” representatives came to my offices to lie to us that OxyContin was different, we threw them out laughing at them. Unfortunately lots of doctors did not and some saw an opportunity to make a lot of money.
I treat narcotic-addicted people every week and the majority say of course they knew how risky OxyContin was, but the high was great, so they easily learned which doctors to visit. I assume the lawyers have not blamed patients and doctors but only the Sacklers because class action suits are the lucrative low-hanging fruit. The doctors and patients involved are hardly guiltless.
DAVE M. DAVIS, ATLANTA
