When I turned 65, I became eligible for Medicare as do millions of other American citizens each year. Along with a dramatic reduction in my monthly healthcare payments, I was given something called an over-the-counter card, or OTC for short.
At first, I didn't understand what the card was all about and why I had received it. Reading up on the gift, I learned that I was eligible to receive $85 per quarter in pharmacy benefits that were specifically geared for the OTC program. So, every three months, January, February, and March, and so on, I had $85 available. If I did not consume the $85 within a given quarter that remaining sum was negated and when the next quarter started another $85 was available to me.
Quite A Bonanza
If you walk drug store aisles in Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, and so on, you will notice an abundance of goods marked “OTC.” If you have an OTC card, they are free to you, in my case up to a total of $85. On the Medicare website and everyplace else I looked I could not determine why I received this gift out of the blue. My premiums for the North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO program, in which I was enrolled, had already shrunk to zero. Where was this $85 per quarter originating?
As time passed, the quarterly amount I was allocated continued to rise. I’m now at $125 per quarter, equal to $500 per year. Fortunately, I don't need anything. I am healthy, for which I am thankful and nothing on the shelves of pharmacies will make me any healthier. So, each quarter, I have $125 to dispense but no need to acquire anything.
Regardless, the $125 per quarter continues. Friends tell me to acquire goods such as heating pads, humidifiers, knee braces, and so on, and donate them to good causes, which seems like a great idea.
Now for Some Answers
A letter in the mail invited me to attend a question and answer sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield. I decided to attend if only to find out more about OTC cards. When I had the opportunity to ask a question of the host, she told me that the OTC program is largely subsidized by the government.
Okay...
I am grateful to be receiving such benefits and in time will undoubtedly need them. Who in government, however, decided to give me $500 a year without knowing my situation? And summing to $5,000 in 10 years, coming from some government fund, strikes me as the continuing folly of big government which seeks to control all aspects of society and our economy.
Today, the government has its mitts in everything, including much of what it should have no business with whatsoever. Even Franklin Roosevelt, who introduced all those alphabet soup programs in an attempt to lift us out of the depression, would be amazed today at the vast array of government programs that essentially take money from one group and give it to another.
While the National Debt Grows Higher
All of this happens as we plunge further into an unsustainable downward spiral of massive government debt, now approaching $35 trillion or $250,000 per taxpayer. This is a grand game of kicking the can: kicking financial responsibility down the road to our children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. Eventually, a reckoning will ensue and our descendants will live a lesser life, in a faltering economy, surrounded by other nations that financially proceeded more wisely.
If anyone from the federal government or the OTC program in particular is reading this, please, let me know. Why should I or anyone else be receiving $500 a year when you don't know the particulars of my situation and when the U.S. cannot afford to offer it?
If a study of some sort exists that shows how it is financially prudent to create such programs as OTC please send it. If you have data that reveals that targeting seniors for OTC-type benefits somehow leads to a financially beneficial result for the government, don’t be shy, send it along.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member