Retirees Lobby Congress on Health Care Reform

by James Parks, Jun 17, 2009

For Betty Smith, today is the day she gets to teach a new group of students: lawmakers from her home state of Pennsylvania. A retired teacher and AFT member from Elkins Park, Pa., near Philadelphia, Smith is one of the nearly 550 retirees at the Alliance for Retired Americans‘ annual legislative conference, who traveled to Capitol Hill today to lobby their home state elected officials in advance of key votes on health care reform.

While she has retirement security because of her union contract, Smith says she knows there are millions of seniors who must choose between paying for prescription medications and buying food. 

It’s not fair in this country, which is so rich, that something like this exists. It’s just wrong.

Smith also believes that the minimum wage is too low and she wants to see it raised. She questions how employers who oppose an increase in the minimum wage expect their employees to make ends meet.

They say [raising the minimum wage] will hurt small business, but I say what about the workers? The [low] wages are hurting them.

Before heading to Capitol Hill, members of the Alliance gave their Leadership Award to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a longtime champion for the nation’s seniors.

As they take part in some 200 scheduled appointments with the members of Congress, Alliance members like Smith will outline the retirees’ stake in this year’s health care debate. Specifically, they will advocate for:

• Ending taxpayer subsidies to private insurance companies that run Medicare Advantage programs. This 20 percent overpayment costs all Medicare beneficiaries an extra $3 per month in premiums.
• Maintaining tax-free health care benefits. Taxing health care benefits would cause a reduction in health care benefits and penalize both workers and retirees who currently have coverage.
• Repealing the prohibition against Medicare negotiating volume discounts with the pharmaceutical companies.
• Creating the opportunity for early retirees (ages 55-64) to buy into Medicare.
• Establishing a public plan option to compete against private health insurance plans.
• Including the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act in health care reform to help Americans with the daunting costs of long-term care. The bill, introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.), would create an insurance program for adults who become functionally disabled.

Also today, Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans President Leon Burzynski will testify at a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing on “Social Security: Keeping the Promise in the 21st Century.”

The members of the Alliance for Retired Americans are lifelong activists, who bring energy, enthusiasm and passion to their work, says Alliance President Barbara Easterling.

They will be educating and mobilizing their neighbors in the coming weeks because they know that our country will never be a just society until every American has access to quality, affordable health care.

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