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Friday Alert
Friday, April 17, 2009
(Alliance for Retired Americans)
Obama
Addresses Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security
in Economic Speech
In a speech at
Georgetown University on Tuesday, President
Obama
assessed economic recovery efforts, linking
health care costs to broader economic problems
and speaking of the need for health care reform
to reign in the expenses of Medicare and
Medicaid. He also called on Congress to
"get serious" and stop postponing difficult
decisions in order to accomplish health care
reform this year. Laying out his vision
for America's economic future, the President
restated the role of Social Security as part of
a secure retirement, speaking of a need to
focus on the program's long-term stability
after health care reform is achieved.
"The high cost of health care in this country
is not just emptying the pockets of retirees,
it is emptying the pockets of America," said
Edward
Coyle, Executive Director of the
Alliance. "By eliminating wasteful
spending like overpayments to private insurance
companies for Medicare Advantage plans, we can
take the first step toward getting our economy
back on track and having quality, affordable
health care for our citizens."
CEO Pay at the Drug
Companies: A Bitter Pill for
Seniors
Struggling to afford your
medicines? Wondering where your
prescription money goes? The AFL-CIO's
new Executive PayWatch web site, www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch,
reports that much of it goes straight into the
CEOs' wallets. A few examples of annual
pay: Johnson & Johnson $29.1 million,
Abbott Laboratories $28.3 million, Merck $25.1
million, and Wyeth $24.2 million.
According to The New York Times, the 2003
Medicare Part D drug law has proven to be "a
financial windfall larger than even the most
optimistic Wall Street analysts have
predicted." The law prohibits Medicare
from negotiating volume discounts with drug
manufacturers, and as a result retirees in the
now-privatized Part D plans pay 58% more than
under plans administered by the Department of
Veterans Affairs which is allowed to negotiate
price discounts. To correct this, the
Alliance supports S. 330 and H.R. 684 to create
a public Part D plan that uses the government's
bulk purchasing power to obtain lower
prices. See the Alliance's 2009 Medicare
Part D fact sheet at http://www.retiredamericans.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/12491.
Insurance Company
Association Sends Fake Letters, Says Seniors
Wrote Them
A political consulting
firm has used the names of real people, without
their knowledge or permission, for a letter
writing campaign supporting Medicare
Advantage. Three such letters were
recently received at The Eagle-Tribune, a newspaper
based in the suburbs of Boston. Following
normal protocol, staffers called the authors of
the letters to confirm authenticity before
printing. None of the seniors whose names
were signed on the letters had written them;
one did not even know what Medicare Advantage
was. The real source of the letters was
discovered when a man called the paper from the
Boston office of the Dewey Square Group, which
has been hired by America's Health Insurance
Plans, a health industry front group, to defend
the Medicare Advantage plans. The caller
pretended to be the grandson of one of the
letter writers and asked if his grandmother's
letter had been published. A spokeswoman
for Dewey Square claimed that the letters were
legitimate and suggested that the seniors were
all suffering from forgetfulness and simply did
not remember signing the letters. She
offered no explanation for why members of her
office were impersonating these people's
relatives.
Due to
Economic Conditions, U.S. Patients Are Filling
Fewer Prescriptions
According to
The Wall
Street Journal, 6.8% of brand-name
prescriptions were left unfilled in the fourth
quarter of 2008, an increase of 22% from the
first quarter of 2007. Generic drug
prescriptions were also filled at a lower rate,
with 4.1% abandoned in the fourth quarter of
2008. Higher insurance co-pays and
individual financial instability are blamed for
the decrease in prescriptions.
Compounding the problem, health insurers are
rejecting coverage for more
prescriptions. In the fourth quarter of
2008, 10.8% of brand-name prescriptions were
denied, an increase of 21% from the first
quarter of 2007. "It is unacceptable that
the economy is putting people's health at
risk," said Alliance President Barbara
Easterling. "It is also yet
another sign that our health care system needs
to be overhauled immediately."
Some Older Borrowers
Are Losing Their Homes Due to Mortgage Broker
Fraud
As the government presses
lenders to modify mortgages, one category of
distressed borrowers is being left out: older
homeowners on low fixed incomes.
According to an article in The Wall Street
Journal on Tuesday, many of these older
borrowers are facing foreclosure because they
were sold loans they could never afford, often
fraudulently. Numerous homeowners had
lived for decades in their home and built up
substantial equity despite their low
incomes. This made them tempting targets
for brokers, who persuaded them to refinance
their mortgages, telling them they could lower
their monthly payments. Instead, many of
these loans were loaded with fees and exploding
interest rates and quickly became
unaffordable. These borrowers' incomes
are frequently too low to qualify for
mortgage-relief programs. Often the only
way to keep these people in their homes is if
lenders rescind the fraudulent loans or reduce
the principal, steps most are unwilling to
take. The U.S. House of Representatives
has endorsed legislation that would allow
bankruptcy judges to modify or rescind loans
even if lenders are unwilling. However,
lenders oppose the measure, and the legislation
has stalled in the Senate. "Many seniors
never know they've been defrauded," said Ruben
Burks, Secretary-Treasurer of the
Alliance. "And law enforcement is much
more likely to prosecute crimes against lenders
than against borrowers."
Ohio Alliance for
Retired Americans Holds Its Spring
Meeting
Ms. Easterling spoke in
Columbus, Ohio on Tuesday at the Ohio
Alliance's 2009 Spring Statewide meeting.
The primary focus of the meeting was the
opportunity to make retiree voices heard
regarding 2009 federal and state legislative
issues.
Did You Know...
The
fastest-growing age group on the social
networking site "Facebook" is women older than
55 (www.CNN.com).
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