The normal state of the high-T, superconductors near optimal doping is characterized by the presence of strong inelastic scattering, leading to anomalous properties, most prominently a linear-in-temperature resistivity over a very large temperature range. We study the efFect of this scattering on the correction to the conductivity due to thermal fluctuations of the order parameter and on the Ginzburg-Landau parameters above T,. The fiuctuation conductivity is a8'ected (reduced) by the inelastic

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... scattering, as compared to the case with a constant pairbreaking scattering rate (magnetic impurities). This leads to a substantial enhancement of an efFect that was recently proposed by Ioffe et al. to account for the observed upturn of the c-axis resistivity above T, .