Medicare Turns 44, Seniors Push for Health Care Reform
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Seniors and health care activists across the country are celebrating the 44th birthday of Medicare today by lobbying for improvements to the program and expanding quality, affordable health care for all.
In more than 30 events in 17 states across the country, members of the Alliance for Retired Americans are honoring Medicare’s success and outlining a positive agenda for comprehensive health care reform legislation that will help current and future retirees.
Thousands of Alliance members are holding birthday parties, sending letters to the editor to their local newspapers and visiting the local offices of lawmakers to call for real health care reform, not cosmetic changes.
Drop Dead? Is That the Way Republican Reps. Talk to Seniors?
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Opponents of critically needed health care reform continue to demonstrate how out of touch they are with working America—and in a recent egregious comment by a House Republican, the opposition has also insulted the nation’s seniors.
Here’s what Florida Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite said Tuesday on the House floor:
“Last week, Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: ‘Drop dead.’ ”
Tony Fransetta, president of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, is outraged by Brown-Waite’s injudicious and downright ugly comment.
Rep. Brown-Waite’s remarks earlier this week were not only inappropriate and inaccurate, but they were a misleading and divisive attempt to scare Florida’s seniors in the current debate over national health care reform.
Prescription Drug Donut Hole: ‘Sweetheart Deal’ for Big Pharma
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Phil Feaster, a retired truck driver from Fort Washington, Md., is one of more than 24 million seniors in Medicare’s prescription drug program, the program that is supposed to cover most of the prescription drug expenses for participants.
But Feaster, a member of the Alliance for Retired Americas, like 3.4 million other Medicare Part D enrollees, falls into a very expensive “donut hole.”
For Feaster, it’s a $700 a month hole that he hopes will be closed by comprehensive health care reform legislation introduced today in the House of Representatives.
Speaking at a Capitol Hill press conference yesterday, Feaster said:
My generation likes to tell it like it is: The donut hole is a rip-off. You pay money, but get nothing in return. Can you imagine going to a restaurant where all they give you is an empty plate—but yet they still force you to pay for a full meal? Of course not.
