Dear Editor:
Can you help me put a name to this?
My U.S. Representatives, Paul E. Kanjorski, recently sent out a bulk mailing of a form letter expressing his "concern" for senior citizens who will not get a cost of living adjustment to their Social Security benefits.
He wrote also that he has co-sponsored a bill to correct this.
He "hopes" that the House "will consider this bill in the near future." [Comforting.]
On the other hand, he is prepared to vote for a so-called "health care" bill that would cut $500 billion from Medicare and, more importantly, adversely impact senior citizens' health care in several ways for the rest of their lives.
Senior citizens can find a way to deal with the loss of COLA adjustment, but can someone tell me how they would deal with a health care system for which much of the cost will be recovered by taking care away from seniors.
And worse, sets up a government bureau which will tell his or her physician what care is to be denied on the basis of advancing age?
I asked Rep. Kanjorski to explain this, but he has not yet answered me.
A.C. Santore
Nesquehoning
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Comments
First, I hope you are monitoring your column for an answer to your question. And here it is: The 550 million cut was NOT in benefits. It is from the subsidy that the government was paying to the insurance companies to handle and offer advantage plans to seniors. The philosophy behind this was that the "insurance companies could handle the administrative duties more efficiently than the government". This has proven to be a false statement and was actually costing more in administrative costs averaging around 20% of each dollar versus the government's costs of 3% . They were being "supplemented" to the tune of 550 million per yr for basically doing nothing. They also claimed that they could offer additional services (prescription, eye and dental coverage) cheaper than the government. This was also a false claim. It just took a while for these facts to become obvious. And also, and you're probably not aware of this, anyone who didn't have or couldn't afford the additional supplement plan are paying towards this supplement. Once again, the cuts were not made to BENEFITS.