Seniors campaign against GOP Medicare plans

Blowing whistles in disdain and cheering speakers who support Medicare as it is, seniors descended on Capitol Hill to lobby against the GOP’s radical restructuring of the health care program for the elderly.

But the GOP-run Congress did not heed the seniors, mobilized by the Alliance for Retired Americans and backed by unions and their allies nationwide. On party-line votes, it enacted the largest charges in Medicare since the program started in 1965.

That restructuring led several strong supporters of present Medicare–and foes of the GOP plans–to warn seniors that they would have to retaliate when they vote next year.

“It’s time to stand up to the drug companies, the health insurance companies and the (Bush) administration,” who are pushing the plan, declared Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “They have the votes to ram it through and the president will sign it. But we have the last say–we have the votes in the next election.”

The alliance, the AFL-CIO, and unions such as AFSCME, the Teachers, USWA, the Communications Workers, the Teamsters and UNITE–all of whom turned out for the rally–opposed GOP Medicare plans. The GOP passed them the night of June 26-27.

The GOP wants to add a loophole-ridden prescription drug benefit run by private health insurers, starting in 2006, and wants to get seniors to transfer from Medicare to HMOs. It also wants to give drug companies $6 billion “as a bribe” to provide drug coverage, Harkin noted. The firms shy away, however, “because you (seniors) are not profitable,” he told the crowd.

The House passed the GOP plan after party leaders spent the week rounding up votes. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said they originally lacked GOP votes in their own caucus to approve it. She predicted few Democrats would vote for it.

The Senate GOP plan was debated and voted on starting June 16 and through the end of the month. Democratic amendments to close its loopholes, especially in prescription drug coverage, lost on virtual party-line votes.

Both GOP plans are complex, and both leave seniors paying most of their drug costs, up to $5,813 per year in the Senate plan and $5,100 yearly in the House plan. Pelosi told the crowd the practical effect is that seniors would shoulder four-fifths of the first $5,000 of their yearly drug costs.

And, she said afterwards, a second practical effect is to encourage companies that now cover retiree drug costs as part of their health care packages to drop them. That’s because the GOP plans would not give companies tax breaks for covering seniors.

Some one-third of all seniors get prescription drug benefits through retiree health care coverage, Pelosi noted. An AFSCME fact sheet says some 4 million retirees could lose coverage.

And a General Electric spokeswoman told the Washington Post the new pacts that a 14-union coalition signed in mid-June with the world’s most-profitable corporation let GE reopen the issue of paying for retiree health benefits.

Both GOP plans, for the first time, impose “means tests” for Medicare, barring people whose income is too high or who own too much. The GOP plans would force seniors to disclose income.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

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