Is it right that a 76 year old woman who has worked pretty much all her life should have to worry about paying for maintenance medications?

Let’s ignore, for the moment, that this particular woman alleges that the meager amount of money she had reserved for this was taken from her by a care-giver to help pay for a vacation. There are lots of kinds of abuse in the world, but financial and emotional abuse of the elderly is one of the most egregious.

Let’s ignore also, for the moment, the fraud perpetrated by the Bush Administration by the so-called prescription drug benefits and cards, which actually raised the cost of medication for the elderly, to the benefit of the drug and insurance companies.

I will assume that the medical costs of this woman are $400/month. I hope that that is excessive, but with multiple medications I’m afraid it’s not. That works out to $4800/year. With the cost of an illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq now topping 164 billion dollars, this means that if that money had been spent differently, in excess of 34 million elderly with similar expenses could have been relieved of the financial burden of paying outrageous drug costs.

One person stealing the money from one elderly woman is egregious. The priorities and policies of the Bush Administration are crimes of enormous proportion.