MEDICARE FOR ALL Must Include All Seniors!
Have you heard the “‘I can’t afford’ Medicare Part B” Blues?
Really? I just googled it —there are NO stats on the number of us American seniors who don’t have Part B coverage, because we can’t afford the premiums. And can’t get Medicaid help, or qualify for a Medicare Savings Plan (MSP), because having saved our nickels religiously over the years against costs of medical emergencies –we have too much money to qualify ($7K assets –2K).
Those of us unable to afford Part B when we turn 65, are confronted with a 10% penalty added every subsequent year to the current cost of the premium. Yes, you heard me right! We’re elders with very modest incomes and means of survival being penalized further. This year (2022), my costs will reach 220 per cent of the current monthly price –12 years’ worth for my 77th birthday. There’s also a (1%) penalty on each month of not signing up for Part D, if you rely on prescription drugs.
Have you EVER heard anyone advocating the benefits of Medicare or “Medicare For All” mention this?! Do our politicians even know about this?! I phoned in to progressive Thom Hartmann’s radio program, as he often promotes a Medicare for All solution. (FYI, Hartmann hosted weekly “Brunch with Bernie” town halls for years before Sanders elected to run for President in 2016.) Coincidentally, the caller just before me was also in her 70s, and like me, only had Medicare Part A –vastly inadequate. Thom was uncharacteristically quiet, hearing our sobering accounts, revealing another inequity in our so-called healthcare system. Even he didn’t know… -Will anyone fight to change this draconian penalty?
I do have Medicare Part A: This provides some hospital insurance, but I need Part B for doctors, outpatient and durable medical equipment expenses. Without Part B, seniors are “dangerously exposed to ruinous health care bills that you so far have avoided,” as one advocate put it.
I’m advised to spend down what money I have saved all these years. So I can someday be even poorer, lol? Poor enough to qualify for Medicaid… But there’s more punishment, in most states, including California where I live: a five-year “look-back” period in evaluating asset disposals. Asset sales must be more than five years old for a person’s remaining assets to qualify for Medicaid. I need to do it over a five year period –not all at once. By then, I will be 80. Is that any way to spend my remaining years?!
I’ve consulted two indie insurance agents wanting to sell me PPO or HMO plans: But they can’t make the Part B penalties disappear. Likewise, a sympathetic HICAP rep (Health Insurance Counseling & Advocacy Program) could only advise me to use up my savings, fix my house, and try to stay out of a hospital. She did confirm for me that if I go bankrupt with medical bills due to a life threatening circumstance, Medicaid should kick in!
I’ve been living frugally most of my adult life, saving for rainy days. Are these my only options? Crossing my fingers to stay out of doctor’s offices for at least 5 more years while spending my savings on things I need or could enjoy but have foregone to date? A monthly cell phone contract? A new roof for my mobile home? Or instead, keep my current savings habits, hoping it will fend off ruination with a medical emergency. Can I continue to evade the coronavirus? I chose a stringent social isolation during the pandemic: Dare I relax it?
HOW DID I BECOME LOW INCOME?
Some so-called Medicare experts suggest it’s either procrastination or negligence that keeps “Medicare eligible” persons from signing up; Thus, we deserve to pay penalties. For the rest of our miserable lives.
I’ll be the first to own up to choices I’ve made in my life about careers, work, remaining single and self-reliant. But I will also be first to insist that the American healthcare system has left me out in the cold. As well as a friend in Texas, singled, who spent 17 years caregiving her father and sister until their death. She has a few benefits, but no savings. She too is on the Don’t Get Sick But If You Do, Don’t Go To A Hospital Or Die plan.
I am a single woman, never married, no spousal benefits. I was ambitious, talented, hard-working, but not at traditional American 8-hour workday jobs. Environmental sensitivities (never diagnosed) and emotional imbalances –coupled with unusual psychic and creative talents would set a course for me, that I had to follow. None of these were big money-makers, but I stayed ‘in the black.’ And saved all the dollars I could. I seldom went to restaurants, traveled only when on a gig, went without cable tv or a monthly cell phone contract. I shopped at thrift stores, and tried to find organic, whole foods at a discount. I’ve been proudly independent, self-reliant –and very modest in my means.
Enter two periods of home displacements. In later 1993, I left LA, and bought a beautiful home on 1/3 acre in Vista CA, with a variable monthly interest. By ’96, with continual rising costs, I could scarcely make ends meet. I sold at a small loss, devastated. I became a renter again, returning to L.A. in the summer of 1999. Twice more, in the span of just six years, I would be displaced, this time by what became known as “the housing bubble,”
Did I mention the difficulty of getting adequate vision or dental care? Holistic (versus allopathic), so-called “alternative,” “complimentary” or “integrative” care? Truth is, I am no fan of allopathy apart from an actual need for surgery, drugs, certainly not for nutritional or other preventive measures. But I hope you will help me get the word out, that ALL seniors deserve to be able to AFFORD Medicare Part B — if they want it. And NOT be conned into the “Advntage” scam programs — but that’s a rant for another day!
