Grassroots efforts need to save Medicare, AARPWyo chief says

TORRINGTON – They are stories, which have almost gained the status of urban legend, of little old ladies eating cat food so they could afford
their medication.
There are tales of seniors, forced to choose between food and health care, because they just can’t afford both by the end of the month.
Those stories could become cold, hard fact in this day and age, as questions abound about the future of Medicare as Congress debates alterations to the current health care insurance system.
That was the topic Wednesday when Sam Shumway, state director of AARP Wyoming, spoke to a packed house of 100 or more Goshen County seniors at the Friendship Senior Center in Torrington. Despite promises on the campaign trail, there are still some major concerns over the program, which was signed into law in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson and has provided affordable health insurance to the elderly for more than half a century.
Shumway started off by poling his audience, comparing, for example, the cost of normal birth in 1965 and today. Responses varied from between about $100 and $200 when Medicare was signed in to law.
Shumway then said, when his youngest child was born six years ago, the cost was in excess of $22,000. And that difference is virtually universal across the board, he said, highlighting the need for the government insurance for seniors.
“I don’t know if (President Johnson and Congress) knew those costs would increase so astronomically,” Shumway said. “But, if we hadn’t had Medicare in place over the years, we’d be in deep trouble.”
There’s a real possibility the program could be changed as current legislators debate health coverage in Washington, he said. Currently, almost 90,000 people in Wyoming utilize Medicare insurance coverage. Some 57 million nationwide are served by the program.
About half the people who use Medicare coverage still pay an average of $3,595 per year in out-of-pocket medical expenses. One in 10 almost $10,500 out of their own pocket, even with the coverage, Shumway said. And that’s based on a median income among people age 65 and older of about $24,350 in Wyoming.

Legislators, the people who will be making the decisions on the future of the Medicare program, say $3,600 isn’t a lot of money to pay for medical services, Shumway said. But those same legislators make far more money annually and have all their medical needs covered, free of charge, he said.
“For me, that’s a lot,” Shumway said. “When you’re on a fixed income, trying to budget for your expenses, that’s a lot.”
Medicare is broken into four parts, Shumway said to give the background on the program. Part A covers hospitalization and is financed by payroll taxed deductions working Americans pay every week. Part B pays for visits to the doctors and is paid for on a sliding scale, averaging about $110 per month, he said.
The third piece of the pie, Part C, deals with private, supplemental insurance coverage. Part D provides prescription drug coverage.
One idea being bandied about in Washington would change the current system, doing away with the Medicare benefit guarantees, instead providing vouchers so seniors can obtain their own health insurance coverage from private vendors. But that plan could be problematic for several reasons, Shumway said.
“The cost of health care is out of control,” he said. Guaranteed Medicare benefits “give you some sense of security.
“The voucher system would end those guaranteed benefits and ask you to go shop for insurance,” Shumway said. “And insurance premiums in Wyoming are among the highest in the country.”
Not only is insurance expensive, those costs keep rising. And there are no guarantee the vouchers would be sufficient to cover premium costs, now or in the future, he said.
Shumway used the example of a $200 voucher. An insurance company could very well say, ‘But the premium is $400,’ he said, which would come out of insured person’s pockets. There’s also the real possibility of insurance premium costs continuing to climb, without a comparable increase in the value of those vouchers, Shumway said.
“The vouchers save the government money on the backs of you all,” Shumway said. “This impacts a lot of people.”
Members of the audience also shared their stories, including one woman who said she’d worked in a pharmacy. She recalled a woman who came in one day to get a prescription filled, but couldn’t afford the $100 price tag for
her medication.
“She was crying and she ended up leaving without the medicine,” the woman recalled. “The pharmacist threw the prescription in the trash and said, ‘Well, that cost me about a dollar.’”
After the presentation, Shumway went back in his mind to that particular tale.
“That’s a powerful story,” he said. “Maybe it didn’t cost a dollar. But the fact she left, that she couldn’t afford it, that she was crying.
“What does that say?” he asked. “Whether it cost him a dollar or it cost him $10, she was asked to pay $100. That was shocking, I guess.”
Everyone agreed the cost of medical services, from that simple delivery of a baby to catastrophic needs, is skyrocketing. Reducing those costs was one possible solution discussed for the problem.
There are no easy answers, though, Shumway said. But the public making their desires known, making themselves heard in the halls and offices of Congress, can go a along way to saving the Medicare system.
“There is no silver bullet,” he said. “This is a complex issue. What we do know is the answer isn’t passing the cost and the burden on to seniors who are some of the most vulnerable.
“Your voices matter a lot,” Shumway said. “The power of one voice, of many voices – they need to hear these stories (in Washington), to hear that $3,500 is a lot of money to real people.”