Affordable Care Act Saves Seniors $2.1 Billion in Drug Costs
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The Affordable Care Act has saved nearly 3.6 million people enrolled in Medicare $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs in 2011, finds a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the health care reform law signed by President Obama in 2010:
is already saving money for millions of Americans with Medicare. As we move forward, we will close the donut hole completely and save even more money for everyone with Medicare.
The Affordable Care Act—which Republican lawmakers are fighting to repeal—provides a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and, beginning this year, a 14 percent discount on generics. Last year, it provided a 7 percent discount on covered generic medications for people who hit the prescription drug coverage gap known as the donut hole, with more than 2.8 million beneficiaries receiving $32.1 million in savings on generics.
Overall, the 3.6 million Americans who hit the donut hole saved an average of $604 on the cost of their prescription drugs. The Affordable Care Act closes the donut hole completely by 2020.
Click here for a state-by-state look at donut hole savings figures for today’s donut and here for a fact sheet.
Gov. Scott Set to Hand Florida’s Prisons to Corporate America
Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled legislature are moving fast to privatize all 29 prison facilities in 18 counties in southern Florida.
Last year, the GOP prison privatization proposal was ruled unconstitutional because it was wrapped into a budget proposal, a violation of Florida laws that requires policy changes be in separate laws. Tallahassee Judge Jackie Fulford ruled that the lawmakers rushed the process.
The privatizers aren’t making the same mistake this time. Not only are they proposing to privatize the prisons but they are changing the law to be able to privatize any service as fast, as easily and as secretly as possible. Under the latest proposals, an agency would not have to report its privatization of a program or service until after the contract is signed. And they also would eliminate a current legal requirement to do a cost-benefit analysis before privatizing any government function.
Romney to Seniors: Let Them Eat PB & J
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Alliance for Retired Americans Communications Director Michael Buckley sends us this report.
While presidential candidate Mitt Romney noshed at a recent Palm Beach fundraiser co-hosted by a sugar baron and a pro sports owner, Florida Alliance for Retired Americans members gathered nearby for a more simple meal: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
The idea for the “Regular Man’s Picnic,” according to event organizer Tony Fransetta, a UAW retiree and Florida Alliance president, was to contrast Mitt Romney and his financial backers with the daily struggles of seniors in Florida and across the nation. Speaking near the Romney event, Fransetta said:
Those inside are advancing the interests of the 1%, while we are outside today to speak up for the 99% who are too often silenced in this country. Read the rest of this entry »
Senate Hearing Room Erupts into Chant: ‘We Are the 99 Percent!’
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Today’s National Day of Action, called by Rebuild the Dream, the Alliance for Retired Americans and embraced by members of the Occupy movement, took an unlikely turn on Capitol Hill, as working and retired Americans joined together to tell lawmakers not to balance the budget on the backs of the 99 percent, as a joint congressional committee has threatened to do through proposed cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
In a packed hearing room at the U.S. Senate, participants in a “Jobs, Not Cuts!” rally, keynoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), erupted into the chant that has come to identify the Occupy movement: “We are the 99 percent!” Most of the chanters bore little resemblance to the stereotyped image of an Occupy protester—many were senior citizens, and the young people in the audience bore a distinctly clean-cut look.
It all served to prove Sanders’ point that mainsteram American wants the wealthiest Americans to pay more taxes, and they want Congress not to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Sanders said: Read the rest of this entry »
Tea Party and Blue Dog Democrats: Let’s Double Unemployment and Drown U.S. Economy
Want a job? Want Medicare when you retire? How about good public schools? Then look out: Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) is joining with his tea party allies to hold a vote today that would guarantee deep, radical cuts—and make those cuts part of the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land.
The so-called Balanced Budget Amendment is even worse than the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). As Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) put it, the Ryan plan would have produced:
the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history, while increasing poverty and inequality more than any measure in recent times and possibly in the nation’s history.
Massachusetts Workers Mobilize as Deficit Deadline Looms
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.
As the congressional Super Committee’s deadline for a federal deficit reduction plan nears, more than 2,600 teachers, ironworkers, construction workers, nurses and others took to the streets in Massachusetts in recent days with a single message: no cuts.
Labor leaders and workers across the state have petitioned Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to pledge to protect America’s workers from devastating cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and have been making their voices heard—through postcards, forums with their members of Congress, resolutions and even an electronic billboard or two.
“We’re here to say no cuts to Social Security, no cuts to Medicare, no cuts to Medicaid, no cuts to the Postal Service,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman told thousands of workers and seniors from across New England at the Wang Theater in Boston,
and we want it for you, we want it for us and we want it for our children and grandchildren.
Republican Reverse Robin Hood Stalks Super Committee
A proposal by Republicans on the so-called “Super Committee” to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security and Medicare benefit is “Robin Hood in reverse: class warfare against the American middle class on behalf of the top 1 percent,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
Click here for his full statement.
Tell Congress ‘No’ to Super Committee Cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid
The AFL-CIO is launching a campaign and gearing up its 700,000 online activists to tell Congress that the proposals by both Republicans and Democrats on the federal budget deficit “Super Committee” to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are “simply unacceptable,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a telephone press conference this morning.
He told reporters that the union movement will:
continue to mobilize in communities to ensure that working Americans aren’t asked to bear even more of the brunt of Wall Street greed. Now is the moment to restore balance in our economy. The absolute wrong way to do that is to take a machete to the safety net that we’ve spent years building.
You can join the action to fight the proposed cuts to these essential middle-class provisions by texting DEBT to 235246 to send a message to your lawmakers.
Trumka: Proposed Super Committee Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid Unacceptable
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today reaffirmed that the AFL-CIO opposes any cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits or to the federal contribution to Medicaid and he criticized Senate Democrats on the “Super Committee” for proposing—according to news reports—hundreds of billions of cuts.
He says that while Republicans proposed even bigger and more harmful cuts to these essential middle class benefits,
these Super Committee Democrats have put all their concessions on the table up front in the vain hope that the Republicans might reciprocate. But it doesn’t work that way. In this political climate, concessions beget more concessions—not a workable compromise.
To join in the fight to opposes cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid text DEBT to 235246.
AFGE, Allies Rally Against Social Security Administration Budget Cuts
Today, AFGE members who work for the Social Security Administration (SSA) and their allies are staging informational pickets outside some 140 Social Security offices around the nation. They are protesting huge proposed budget cuts that would severely impact services to the elderly, disabled and children.
Joining the AFGE members are activists from the Alliance for Retired Americans, the Strengthen Social Security campaign and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
The cuts would mean many of the agency’s 1,500 field offices would be forced to close, phone calls would go unanswered and benefit applications and other critical workloads would become seriously backlogged, resulting in delayed and incorrect benefit payments. Says Witold Skwierczynski, president of AFGE’s Council of Field Operations Locals:
Cutting Social Security’s budget at a time that record baby boomers are seeking benefits is another example of bad Washington politics. These cuts will only punish Americans who count on Social Security and Medicare by adding to backlogs and limiting assistance for our seniors, the disabled and families that have lost a parent or spouse. Read the rest of this entry »
