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What Is at Stake for Retirees in Health Care Debate? |
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Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling lays out the case for reform of Medicare, which turned 44 this week, in this cross-post from the Huffiington Post.
As we honor Medicare’s success—it has reduced senior poverty by two-thirds—it is also an opportunity for retirees to become more aware of what is at stake for them in health care reform.
The Alliance for Retired Americans, a progressive grassroots advocacy organization, held 30 events around the country to mark Medicare’s birthday and advance a pro-retiree agenda for this year’s health care debate.
What can the health care bill do to help current and future retirees? Here are a few ideas:
- Help Early Retirees. More than 5 million Americans ages 55-64 do not have health insurance. People in this age group should be able to buy in to Medicare so they can see a doctor more often, especially for preventive care.
- Close the Donut Hole. The “donut hole” coverage gap in Medicare Part D means that each year about one in four seniors will spend several months paying full price for their prescriptions while still having to pay their premiums.
- Make Long-Term Care Affordable. We must make sure the health care bill includes the CLASS Act by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). It would create an insurance program to help middle-class families with the cost of long-term care.
- Help Continue Retiree Benefits. If we eliminate the tax benefit for employers who provide insurance, retiree health care could become yet another broken promise. Many of us sacrificed wage increases over the years in exchange for these benefits.
- Hold the Insurance Companies Accountable. A “public plan” option would put pressure on the private insurance companies to keep their premiums and business practices in check. If they are truly doing the best they can, why should they be worried about a little healthy competition?
We are beginning to see misleading and divisive attempts to scare seniors. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) recently took to the House floor to declare that the House Democrats’ health bill “essentially said to America’s seniors: Drop dead.”
It’s time for Washington to move beyond these Karl Rove-style tactics of divide-and-conquer.
Not only do retirees have a lot at stake in the health care debate, but we also worry about our children and grandchildren in these difficult times. Working together, we can create a health care reform plan that helps Americans of all ages.
4 Comments
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Alas, in my opiniion; Medicare is not a success. Compared to the insurance I enjoyed thru most of my lifetime (Canco insurance/steelworker), Medicare has too high deductable, too complex and more. The drug component of Medicare a sick joke.
Many others whom had good labor insurance had better insurance than the current Medicare program. For many, that is not the case today as companies cut benefits and unions unwilling or unable to comply companies to keep word to employees and retirees on insurance promises.
Alas, most of the nation did not have good union insurance and to a person who had no insurance suddenly getting some limited insurance, Medicare is great.
Adopting a single-payer healthcare bill like HR676 would clearly close the donut hole and fix most of the woes for many, but even the words “single-payer” are censored by the media and others more closely than obscene expressions.
By the way, most of those “Medicare rally” events were not covered by the media.
Looks as if the administration is beginning to ‘come clean’ regarding tax hikes. Robert Gibbs just ‘alluded’ to it on HLN. Here it comes America! Not just the rich are gong to be tapped to pay for the spending binge going on in DC. No surprise there!
Guess what Washington, if we wrent’t ALREADY being taxed to death we could afford health care!
I am all for healthcare reform, but not healthcare reform that I don’t know what it is. I am on Medicare , and unlike another persons comments, I am very happy with my medicare coverage. I do not want to see traditional Medicare changed.
My problem with healthcare reform, is that we do not really know what it entails. I don’t know why the President and Congress will not tell us exactly what healthcare reform is. I watched the presidents news conference and he did not want to answer certain questions. Everyone only wants to tell us what they want us to hear. Even AARP doesn’t seem to know.
I think they should write the plan down in plain English so the American people could really make an informed choice about something this important. I don’t believe it should take hundreds of pages either.
I know I don’t want to lose what I haver in the process. I don’t want to lose the benefits provided by my former employer, because of some loophole we don’t know about. I certainly do not want forced into an HMO, or some other kind of managed care.
I f they would just come out and tell us whaty it really is, then the Republicans and insurance Co’s and other right wing organizations, would have to shut up, because everyone would know what the truth is.
I don’t understand why our leader cannot operate with openess, simplicity, common sense, and honesty.
I certainly do not want to end up worse off than I am now.
My hope was that they would come up with a plan where my Daughter her husband and 3 children could have some decent insurance they could afford. Right now , they both work, but still can’t afford health insuranc , so they have none.
Thank you
The United States spends, each year, two trillion dollars on health care. That amounts to twice as much per person as any other developed nation spends, and, the delivered health care is of lesser quality than that in the other developed nations. Almost fifty million Americans have no health care other than hospital emergency rooms. Emergency room care is not free. The rest of us are paying for emergency room care with at least one thousand dollars more per year in private health insurance premiums than would otherwise be the case.
Given the above, one must ask why this discrepancy exists in our country. Why does their system work so well and ours fail so badly? What do the medical establishments in other nations with universal health care know that ours does not? The answer, of course, is that there is nothing their medical establishments know that ours does not. The problem is not in our medical establishment.
The problem is the Washington establishment. Other governments recognized the need and devised a logical system which assured delivery of high quality health care services to all of their people. Our government did not. The politicians’ excuse is that we cannot afford a single payer system. But with two trillion dollars to spend, we can afford a quality health care system for everyone in America. What stands in the way of providing quality health care to all Americans is the Congress of the United States. Political action committees and special interest lobbies dole out millions of dollars to the members of Congress for the sole purpose of influencing their votes on national issues such as health care.
The United States has a cobbled together system of health care delivery which benefits the providers, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical companies at the expense of the medical community, the business community, and the people who need care. The situation is well known and thoroughly understood by the politicians. As a result, Congress is struggling to make it look as if they are conducting an ernest search for the “best” solution. But the real search is for a solution that will continue to facilitate, and render no harm to their benefactors in the health care industry.
As the health care “debate” stumbles on, we can only hope for more decisive leadership from President Obama. Certainly there will be little leadership from the politicians in Congress who will devise additional convoluted proposals to go with the already touted “co-ops” and “trip wires” and “keep what works”, and deny any consideration of a single payer option that would work.
Political efforts to cloud the issue will not change the facts pertaining to health care in America. Our present system demands more and more money for less care, more and more money for limited availability of quality of care, and more and more money leaving millions of Americans with no care while the private providers evade coverage and enjoy obscene profits.
Other developed countries do it better at half the cost, and, unless we demand real change from Washington, based on the facts and common sense, our “do nothing for the people” Congress will only continue to go through the motions of change. They will play out their ” wink wink nod” charade, and they will continue to support the existing health care establishment at the expense and well being of the American people.