Drug bill no benefit, say seniors

Published 7:36 am Friday, February 29, 2008

EDMONDS – Representatives of the state AARP chapter did their best to explain to a group of agitated seniors Jan. 9 in Edmonds why the organization supported the prescription drug bill recently passed by Congress.

It’s questionable whether anyone found the explanation acceptable.

All the seniors who spoke at the meeting at the South County Senior Center either blasted the drug bill and the AARP or simply had questions about how the complex new law works. No one expressed support.

“I think it is idiocy you let this happen,” Edmonds resident Sylvia Hochman told the AARP representatives. “I’m scared to death I’m going to lose my prescription drugs.”

Defenders of the bill note that it will provide drug coverage at little cost to those who need it most. It does not undermine Medicare, they say, but rather provides an option in addition to it.

Opponents say it is a veiled attempt to privatize Medicare, that it will destroy the program through the private companies taking the healthier applicants and leaving the others for Medicare, that it does not reduce the cost of drugs and that the benefit leaves too many people and expenses uncovered.

“The bill is not perfect,” said Doug Shadel, president of the Washington state chapter of the AARP. “When you’re talking about politics you’re talking about compromise and when you’re talking about compromise it almost never results in perfection.”

The bill’s $400 billion price tag is the largest health care expenditure by the federal government in history, Shadel said, and the first major expansion of Medicare since it was created in 1965. He and Lauren Moughon, advocacy director for the state AARP, said the bill is an important first step and can be improved upon down the road.

“This is not the finish line, this is the starting line,” Shadel said.

Will Parry, president of the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans, disagreed.

“We’re very skeptical what can be done short of a complete repeal,” said Parry, representing the bill’s opponents at the presentation. “I think we’ve got to junk it and start over.”

Parry said the plan is an attempt by the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans, who he said shut Democrats out from providing input on the bill, to privatize Medicare. He said the insurance companies would “cherry pick” the healthier seniors, leaving Medicare to try to cover the others.

“Medicare was first enacted because private insurance couldn’t make money off older sicker people,” Parry said.

The AARP representatives, while acknowledging opponents’ contentions, said they believe the bill’s strengths are worth its weaknesses. The organization supported the bill because of the coverage for the lowest income and those with the highest costs where before there had been none, and because of the government subsidy encouraging the private companies to offer the plans.

“The premium support issue was absolutely the do-or-die issue for AARP,” Moughon said.

The AARP does not believe the contention that Medicare will be weakened by the private plans, noting the program is optional.

“You can figure out if it’s a good deal for you, and if it’s not you don’t have to enroll,” Moughon said.

Parry said the complex array of options – seniors will have to decide if the plan is better than their current plan, if they have one, and from among the options available within Medicare and Medigap supplemental policies – is another strike against the bill. Those with dementia or for whom English is a second language, for example, especially would have trouble sorting through the numbers and choices.

“I’ve done post-graduate work at universities and I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do,” said Edmonds resident Art Kirschenbaum, who compared the AARP’s support of the bill to “Benedict Arnold.”

Differing opinions on the bill were another point of concern for Parry, who said this is part of a divide-and-conquer strategy – that it would lead to the “fragmentation of the senior generation as a political force,” he said.