Health Issues Take to the Street
Rep. Nancy Johnson, Chairman of the House subcommittee on Health, likely doesn’t know Steve Starnes, who has paranoid schizophrenia. Not the kind of guy she'd spend time with and who could blame her? It’s just as unlikely Sen. Mike Enzi knows him, although Mike chairs the Senate committee on health.
That’s understandable. Mike is from Wyoming, Nancy from Connecticut and both of them are a long way from Florida. Nancy and Mike both have press secretaries. The voices Steve hears are mostly in his head.
On the 7th day of the new Medicare benefit, there were no seven-swans-a-swimming for Steve, but the voices were back. Ominous voices, according to Robert Pear’s piece in the NY Times, and Steve begged his pharmacy for the medication he had been taking for ten years.
No dice. Medicare no longer approved.
Steve was understandably scared. "Without them, I get aggravated at myself, have terrible pain in my gut, I feel as if I am freezing one moment and burning up the next moment. I go haywire, an…