Monday is a dog.

Look up the word forgiveness in the dictionary and you would find this.......

Amish mourn gunman who killed 5 girls

Dozens of Amish neighbors gathered Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife's family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.

His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him, said Bruce Porter, a fire department chaplain from Colorado who attended the service.

About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish.

"It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness they have toward the family. I broke down and cried seeing it displayed," said Porter, who had come to Pennsylvania to offer what help he could. He said Marie Roberts was also touched. CNN Link

Medicare-less News

Many seniors and alter-abled have a supplemental medicare policy to well...supplement and provide better coverage than Medicare, alone provides. Now, with the new Medicare Part D plan you were obligated to stay with the supplemental policy if it was going to offer a drug plan. Basically, I had no choice , but to participate in my health insurance company's drug plan, even if I did not like their formulary, did not like their prices, etc... However, there is another alternative.

At first glance a private fee-for-service Medicare plans seems worth considering if you are a senior or alter-abled.. This NTY article explains this back door approach to privatizing Medicare which is being subsidized by the government. And guess who is benefitting the most?!?!?....insurance companies.....

For years, private insurers have offered alternatives to the federal Medicare program that are meant to give patients lower-cost options than the government coverage provides. More than 7 million people now subscribe to such plans, out of a total Medicare population of 42.5 million.

But suddenly a type of private insurance plan is gaining ground that looks very similar to the basic coverage long available to anyone with a federally issued Medicare card.

And the government is paying the private insurance industry a subsidy of 11 percent per patient, on average, to provide it.

Since the government substantially increased the subsidies two years ago for these most basic private industry plans -- known as private fee-for-service -- enrollment in the plans has grown tenfold to 820,000. About 18,000 people signed up in August alone, Medicare said yesterday in its latest update. And some analysts expect enrollments to double or even triple by 2009. NYT Link

Oregon state pays my monthly Medicare premium of $88.50, I believe, because my income is low enough. I wonder if I could use that money differently to find a better insurance policy? Critics of fee-for-service say it's part of a scheme......

Critics say the growing transfer of the nation's $342 billion Medicare program to private industry has already been playing out through other means, like the new Medicare Part D drug program and various Medicare-linked managed care plans and H.M.O's offered by private insurers. NYT Link

The article also explains that you can have more flexibility with Medicare Part D plans using fee-for-service insurance. It seems hard to believe since I have such strict guideleines regarding which drug plan I must use. I have no choice. But then you read things like this......

Texas Medicare beneficiaries who had 47 choices for this year's prescription drug coverage will have even more head-scratching to do when they sign up for a 2007 plan.

Statewide, 60 stand-alone drug plans, offered by 24 different insurance companies, will be vying for business when elderly and disabled beneficiaries begin signing up for next year's coverage on Nov. 15, Medicare officials announced Friday. People happy with their current coverage can sit tight. Chron.com Link

and this:

Medicare Part D changes spell more choices, more complicated enrollment

New changes to Medicare Part D are coming soon, and this year, enrollment will likely be even more complicated. For those who are signing up for the first time, or updating their coverage, it may be wise to start planning now. That's because this time around, there are even more providers and more plans to choose from. 49abcnews.com Link

But lets get to the bottom line........

Drug Makers Expect Stronger Profits

Several large U.S. drug makers are expected to report improved third-quarter profits, helped by cost cuts, the Medicare drug benefit and growing sales of newer products. But generic competition and management changes have challenged some companies. Houston Chronicle.com