Part 2 - Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 2009

Yesterday we examined how the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act of 2009 (PPACA, H.R. 3590) would act to improve health care for America's older persons.

Today, we continue that examination.

Keeps Nursing Homes Safe - The PPACA requires long term care facilities to conduct criminal background checks on prospective employees. Through this legislation, families will have greater assurance that their loved ones receiving long-term care are safe if the people who provide care have passed a background check for previous criminal behavior.

Brings Savings To Medicare - By eliminating wasteful over-payments to private Medicare Advantage plans and create new incentives for coordinated, high quality care across the health care spectrum. Medicare Advantage plans currently rake in an average of 14% more per person than does traditional Medicare or added perks without any demonstrably better medical results. Ending these over-payments will be an important step toward insuring the long-term solvency of Medicare's Trust Fund.

Helps 55-64 Year Olds Stay Healthy:

1. Eliminates pre-existing condition and health status exclusions.
2. Establishes a "basic benefits package" that ALL health Insurance plans must provide.
3. Limiting Premium Costs and Out-Of-Pocket costs
4. Making Health Insurance Affordable by offering a Public Option alternative.
5. Supporting Coverage for Retirees by creating a $5-billion fund to assist employers offset the costs of expensive health claims for its 55-64 year old retired employees.

From the setting of minimum standards of what must be included in every health insurance plan to helping employers pay for retiree costs and establishment of competition to drive down rates and ending over-payments to Medicare while preserving the existing doctor of choice, PPACA 2009 remedies many of the ills of the current system and insures that older Americans are not left behind in the process.

Okay, it is not perfect. Granted. But, it is what is available right now and if we miss this opportunity the likelihood of ever achieving equitable health care for all Americans diminishes greatly. The drug Tsars and insurance oligarchs will have won again.

Coming Tomorrow: Have a real effect on the debate. Adopt a key senator!

Patient Protection and Affordibility Act of 2009 (The Facts)

Part One of Two Parts:

As the U. S. Senate prepares to begin debate on health care reform older Americans need to have the facts and to understand their stake in the outcome. The coming Senate floor debate is a huge step forward in bringing equitable health care to all Americans, but our goal (Alliance for Retired Americans) of affordable and accessible health care for all Americans is still to be fulfilled.

We hope that the Senate will take this opportunity to improve what the House brought forth and completely phase out the doughnut hole; allow the government (Medicare) to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs; and remove the tax on the health benefits of retirees and working families.

Regardless, there are many positives in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 (PPCA), H.R. 3590 for older Americans.

Lowers Your Prescription Drug Costs - By requiring drug makers to provide 50% discount to Part D beneficiaries for brand-name drugs and biologics beginning July 1, 2010. It will also shrink the "doughnut hole" by $500 per senior for 2010.

Protects Your Choice of Doctor - By preventing a scheduled 21% cut in Medicare doctor payments in 2010, ensuring that doctors will continue to serve seniors and seniors can continue seeing their preferred doctors.

Makes Preventive Services More Affordable - Today, Medicare beneficiaries must pay 20% of the cost of preventive services. Much of those prohibitive costs will go away, meaning no copay for immunization, cancer screenings, cholesterol screening, bone calcium level screening, and colonoscopies, among other procedures. Older Americans will, at last, have an opportunity doe free annual check-ups, with comprehensive health risk assessments that will help identify chronic disease, modifiable risk factors and emergency or urgent health needs.

Helps Seniors Prepare for Long Term Care Costs - Ten million Americans today need long term services and support---including 4-million under age 65. Despite this urgent and critical need, fewer than 10% can afford the incredibly expensive private long term care insurance policies. To met this urgent need and to promote independence the PPACA will create a new, voluntary national insurance program (to be known as the CLASS Independence Benefit Plan) that will help seniors pay for care in their own homes rather than premature entry into a nursing home in order that they get care through Medicaid.

Coming Tomorrow: Nursing Home Safety, More Medicare Savings, & Helping 55-64 Year Olds Stay Healthy.

Texas Health Care Rally

Let me be the first - "Happy Holidays"!

Here we go again....reading that can't you just hear Ray Charles somewhere back in your memory banks? But, the here we go again is not Baby Ray's soulful rendition of that great country ballad. Or even Dean Martin's more straight forward version. No, not even close.

The here we go again I refer to is the fact that here we are on the eve of Thanksgiving eve and we're already hearing rumblings of our annual religio-culture war about whether the "reason for the season" is the celebration of the birth of the Jewish prophet "Jesus of Nazareth", on whom Christianity is based, or of a highly evolved pagan winter tide celebration wrapped up in capitalistic consumerism, gift-giving and football schedules. Unless, of course, you are Armenian, then you celebrate the birthday of Jesus on January 6th. I'm not certain about their gift-giving traditions or football schedules. I am dead-on certain about the Armenian January 6 thingee though!

The truth of the matter is very clear to any fair-minded, reasonably well-educated individual; there is absolutely no historical proof of even the year, let alone precise day, of Jesus's birth. I do not care what you believe, or what you believe the bible tells you, or what your preacher Jimmy Ray Billy Bob tells you, there is no historical evidence of even the precise year of Jesus's birth. Yes, there are a couple of conflciting date ranges extrapolated from biblical reference and known historic dates. But, nothing that tells us exactly when Jesus was born. Hence, since such proof or evidence is non-existent, I really would prefer that you not try to force on me and others your overly sentimental and fact-denying belief that the holiday season is about the birth of Jesus and somehow tied to the founding of the United States, Thanksgiving family dinners, the flag, WWII, and the Rose Bowl.

Got it? You are free to believe what you want...no matter how ill-informed is the foundation of your beliefs. What you are not free to do is to try to bully me and others into adhering to your narrow belief system.

I am going to celebrate the holidays, each and every damned one of them that I can fit into my schedule (even the ones I don't entirely understand) and revel in gorging on rich foods, spending too much on presents, and making certain I watch at least one version of the Christmas Carol, read at least once the story of The Little Match Girl, stay up til midnight on Xmas eve in yet another futile attempt to see if animals actually do talk on the stroke of twelve, and fit as many football games into my schedule as my wife will let me get away with.

So, with that, let me be the first; Happy Holidays!

The Right-Wing Scam in Your Mailboxes

Let's say that, as an older American you get something in the mail from an organization calling its self the "Christian Seniors Association", you, I think, would be disposed to view them rather kindly...wouldn't you. Maybe even send them the $12.95 membership fee. After all the name Christian Seniors Association sort of conjures up mind images of grey-haired folks holding pot-lucks and planning raffles in the church basement.

Well, don't you believe it for an instant. It is just another scurrilous, fund-raising scam perpetrated by a family of right-wing homophobic zealots who find it easier to rip-off seniors by preying on their fears than to travel about the country selling crankcase oil as driveway black-tops or aluminum siding. It's a different scam, yeah. But, the end result is the same.

Let's take a moment to examine who and what is behind the scam which is lurking in mailboxes near you. But, first...The Letter & Pitch. The letter opens with this question: "Do you SUPPORT or OPPOSE the far-Left Agenda now being pushed into law by President Obama, Liberals who control Congress and AARP?"

Yeah, that well-known, undercover cell of the Communist Party, AARP. OK, OK I know I'm being a bit snarky, but for crying out loud, the AARP as a far left organization? Gimme a break, will ya!

Then it goes on with some phony questionnaire/ballot throwing about all the far-right's buzz and code words: "far-left", "socialism", "Socialist Agenda", "traditional moral values", "fighting for religious values", "AARP aggressively promotes homosexual lifestyle", "Crushing Burden On Our Grandchildren" and other equally profane and ridiculous bilge.

Then it moves into its main purpose. An appeal for membership at $12.95 and an "additional gift, above and beyond your regular membership dues...."10, $15, $20, $50, $100, or perhaps even more.

Sound faintly familiar? Well it ought to. This letter preying on frightened and unwary seniors comes from none other than Rev. Lou Sheldon, his daughter Angela and son-in-law, Jim Lafferty.
Sheldon is best known for his bug-eyed homophobic attacks on homosexuals through his umbrella front-organization, the Traditional Values Coalition and for his role on the Republican Congressional Committee and leadership in the Lindsey Graham for Senate campaign.

Son-in-law, Jim Lafferty is well-known Republican flack who served as Tom Delay's press-secretary from 1994-1995 and was a senior adviser to that frightening specter of wrath, she of the make up applied with a trowel, former Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris. Yeah her. The one that paved the way for that dry-drunk sociopath, George W. Bush to ascend into the White House.

Daughter Angela, one assumes, licks stamps and stuffs envelopes when not serving as Katherine Harris's make-up advisor.

A very unsavory lot and about as Christian as the pimple on a donkey's butt. Which is to say, not at all Christian.

And, now let us play the right-wing Republican game of guilt by association and implied menace through clever juxtaposition of words and letters: Christian Seniors Association, yep CSA. One has no problem envisioning them draped in the Stars and Bars.