April 2008
An Information Service of the
Maine
Council of Senior Citizens –
Alliance for Retired Americans
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FROM THE DESK OF THE MCSC/ARA PRESIDENT
John Carr
Most of our time has been spent at the Maine
State House during the past two months
working to defend past gains.
The Appropriations Committee in joint
sessions with other affected House and
Senate Committees have been holding hearings
on the Governor’s proposed cuts to the
biannual budget in order to reach a balanced
budget. The proposed cuts are very
controversial to say the least.
I was able
to testify in opposition to budget cuts
before the joint Appropriations and Health
and Human Services Committee on behalf of
“non-catergoricals”. These are people
who are single adults, many who are between
the ages of 50 to 65 and are earning poverty
wages. The proposed cuts would eliminate
their prescription drugs and many benefits
received from MaineCare (Medicaid).
On March 12th hundreds of people showed up
at the State House to lobby against these
cuts. If these budget cuts are agreed to by
the Legislature these “non-catergoicals”
would show up at hospital emergency rooms
for medical care and cost all payers of
health care more money than what’s being
paid today. Does it make sense? NO, but it
will balance the budget.
Another bill of interest that we supported
is LD 2189, An Act to Protect Homeowners
from Equity Stripping during Foreclosure.
It’s amazing that when people are down and
in need of help someone comes along to give
them a good kick in order to make money.
Equity Stripping, skimming or foreclosure
rescue are forms of predatory lending
practiced by some companies that encourage
homeowners facing foreclosure to transfer
title or equity to the lender in exchange to
allow the homeowner to remain in their home
as tenants usually paying more money in rent
than what their mortgage cost and after a
short time are evicted and the lender ends
up with the title and equity.
LD 2189, sponsored by Representative Charlie
Priest of Brunswick, adds to the Maine
Homeowners Act of 2007 by expanding
protections to homeowners from people trying
to make a quick buck during the time when
help is needed.
These are some of the many decisions our
Legislature have to make before the middle
of April. The MCSC-ARA will be there at
times to have our views heard.
Please send
letters or emails to Senators Snowe and
Collins to support S. 2736, Section 202,
Supportive Housing for the Elderly Act of
2008. This bill will provide for the
maintenance of current elderly housing and
add development funds for new housing. Maine
is the oldest, in population, State in the
Nation and our elderly housing needs are
large and growing every day.
John Carr
President Maine Council of Senior
Citizens/ARA
BUDGET WITH CUTS SENT TO GOVERNOR
AUGUSTA — The Legislature gave final
approval Monday night March 31 to a $190
million supplemental
budget that
cuts funds from many social service programs
and schools.
The supplemental budget, designed to
close a gap in the state's two-year $6.3
billion budget, does not raise broad-based
taxes or dip into the state's "rainy day"
fund.
The House approved the supplemental
budget by 84-55, and the vote in the Senate
was 18-17. By approving the budget before
midnight, lawmakers avoided deeper,
temporary cuts by the governor.
BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS
• Cuts $65 million from the Department of
Health and Human Services. (Most of the non-catergorical's
benefits, explained above, were saved.)
• Cuts $34 million in local school aid.
• Uses $28 million in savings from decreased
use of the state employee health plan.
• Increases fees for criminal background
checks from $28 to $31, to generate $533,000
in revenue.
• Allows courts to charge a $200 fee for
summary judgments, raising $1 million.
• Increases the license fee from $600 to
$1,000 for malt liquor and wine for
out-of-state manufacturers.
• Cuts funding to the Maine State Museum,
which means the museum will close on Sundays
starting July 1.
Source: House Speaker's Office
For complete
article:
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story_pf.php?id=178997&ac=PHnws
SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS HEALTH CARE PROBLEMS
Over a period of seven weeks, more than
26,000 people took the online 2008 Health
Care for America Survey sponsored by the
AFL-CIO and Working America. Most are
insured and employed. Most are college
graduates. More than half are union members.
These are the people, it would seem, most
likely to have positive experiences with
America’s health care system. Instead, their
responses tell a sobering story about the
breadth of the problems with health care in
America. They say our system has fundamental
problems that must be fixed.
And they’re ready to vote about it.
Click here to read the full results of the
2008 Health Care for America Survey.
And
click here to listen to AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney discuss the survey
results.
You can learn more about our findings,
download the full report in PDF format and
read the thousands of heart-wrenching
stories about the effects of this broken
health care system on the respondents and
their families.
One in three survey respondents say they had
to skip medical care because of cost, a
quarter had serious problems paying for the
care they needed and a huge majority--79
percent--say health care is a top voting
issue.
Here’s what else the survey found:
-
The demand
for change in today’s health care system
is based primarily on deep concerns
about costs.
-
The failures of America’s health care
system are a significant factor in
broader economic problems facing working
families today.
-
Having
insurance coverage is not insulating
families from problems, concerns and
dissatisfaction with today’s health care
system.
-
But people
who lack insurance—and those who have
children younger than 18 who are not
covered—report particularly troubling
problems getting the care they need
because of cost.
-
More than
half of the survey takers say their
health insurance does not cover all the
care they need at a price they can
afford.
-
Medicare
is not a shield against unaffordable
prescription drug prices.
-
Concerns
about today’s health care system span
all ages, races and education levels,
and affect the insured as well as the
uninsured.
“These are the people you would expect to
have positive experiences with America’s
health case system...the lucky ones--except
they’re not,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
said of the survey results. “They’re
hurting, struggling to pay medical bills,
skipping doctor visits and prescriptions
because of costs. And they are extremely
pessimistic about the future of our
country. They think health care is one of
today’s most important issues--and they are
ready to vote about it.”
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Seniors Struggling to Pay for Prescription
Drugs
Medicare Part D is not protecting seniors
from unaffordable prescription drug prices,
according to the results of the AFL-CIO's
2008 Health Care for America Survey.
More than 26,000 people, including over
1,600 Alliance members, responded to the
survey over a seven-week period in January
and February. Compared to 46% overall,
53% of
Medicare beneficiaries who responded said
prescription drugs are either not affordable
or not covered, reflecting the
inability of the privately administered Part
D drug benefit to negotiate with big drug
companies for lower prices and the dangers
of the "donut hole" period when
prescriptions are not covered.
38% of Medicare recipients also reported
specialists as either not covered or not
affordable, while 37% placed tests,
preventative care and checkups in this
category.
One third of all respondents went without
medical care due to cost, one quarter
described "serious problems" paying for care
and 79% called health care a top voting
issue.
"Thank you to every Alliance member who
participated in this survey," said George J.
Kourpias, President of the Alliance. "Your
responses prove that seniors have had
enough, and that we will be making a change
in November."
HEALTH COSTS SKY ROCKETING
Spending on Health to Rise Dramatically
By 2017, total health care spending will
double to more than $4 trillion a year,
accounting for one of every $5 the nation
spends, the federal government projects.
The 6.7 percent annual increase in spending
- nearly
three times the rate of inflation-
will be largely driven by higher prices and
an increased demand for care, the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services said
Monday. Other factors in the mix include a
growing and aging population. The first wave
of baby boomers become eligible for Medicare
beginning in 2011.
With the aging population, the federal
government will be picking up the tab for a
growing share of the nation's medical
expenses. Overall, federal and state
governments accounted for about 46 percent
of health expenditures in 2006. That
percentage will increase to 49 percent over
the next decade.
"Health is projected to consume an expanding
share of the economy, which means that
policymakers, insurers and the public will
face increasingly difficult decisions about
the way health care is delivered and paid
for," CMS economists said.
Overall health care spending in 2017 was
estimated to increase to $4.3 trillion. That
would be about 20 percent of U.S. gross
domestic product,
or GDP, the total monetary value of all
finished goods and services produced in a
country.
In 2006, people and the government spent
$2.1 trillion on health care, an average of
$7,026 a person. In 2017, health spending
will cost an estimated $13,101 a person.
MAJORITY
OF DOCS WANT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON - More than half of U.S. doctors
now favor switching to a national health
care plan and fewer than a third oppose the
idea, according to a survey published on
Monday.
The survey suggests that opinions have
changed substantially since the last survey
in 2002 and as the country debates serious
changes to the health care system.
Of
more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent
said they support legislation to establish a
national health insurance program,
while 32 percent said they opposed it,
researchers reported in the journal Annals
of Internal Medicine.
The 2002 survey found that 49 percent of
physicians supported national health
insurance and 40 percent opposed it.
“Many claim to speak for physicians and
represent their views. We asked doctors
directly and found that, contrary to
conventional wisdom, most doctors support
national health insurance,” said Dr. Aaron
Carroll of the Indiana University School of
Medicine, who led the study.
“As doctors, we find that our patients
suffer because of increasing deductibles,
co-payments, and restrictions on patient
care,” said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked
on the study with Carroll. “More and more,
physicians are turning to national health
insurance as a solution to this problem.”
PATCHWORK
The United States has no single organized
health care system. Instead it relies on a
patchwork of insurance provided by the
federal and state governments to the
elderly, poor, disabled and to some
children, along with private insurance and
employer-sponsored plans.
Many other countries have national plans,
including Britain, France and Canada, and
several studies have shown the United States
spends more per capita on health care,
without achieving better results for
patients.
An estimated 47 million people have no
insurance coverage at all, meaning they must
pay out of their pockets for health care or
skip it.
Contenders
in the election for president in November
all have proposed various changes, but none
of the major party candidates has called for
a fully national health plan.
Insurance companies, retailers and other
employers have joined forces with unions and
other interest groups to propose their own
plans.
“Across the board, more physicians feel
that our fragmented and for-profit insurance
system is obstructing good patient care, and
a majority now support national insurance as
the remedy,” Ackermann said in a statement.
MCCAIN HEALTH PLAN WOULD COST US ALL MORE
Republican presidential frontrunner, Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.), is backing a plan
that would make health care even more out of
reach for most of us.
McCain is pledging “no new taxes,” but his
own health
care plan might represent a massive tax
increase for working families,
according to the Tax Policy Center and the
Kaiser Family Foundation.
[C]onsider McCain’s health care proposal.
He says he
would treat employer-sponsored health
benefits as taxable income, while
giving individuals a tax credit for the
insurance they buy. On its own, taxing
employer insurance just like wages would be
a huge tax increase—OMB estimates in the
neighborhood of $1 trillion from 2009–2013.
For union members with good health care
plans, the tax increase would be even
bigger. An employee whose health benefits
are worth $15,000 would have to pay taxes on
an extra $15,000 in income.
McCain’s plan theoretically compensates for
this tax hike by offering tax credits for
workers to pay for their health care.
Unfortunately, according to studies by the
Kaiser Family Foundation,
these tax
credits would cover less than half of the
average cost of a health insurance premium—meaning
employers would have less incentive to cover
their employees, pushing workers out of
employer-based systems and into the private
insurance market.
On the eve of Senator John McCain's visit to
Exeter, the New Hampshire Alliance for
Retired Americans united outside the Concord
Legislative Office Building and protested
his plan for Social Security privatization.
Local seniors will urge McCain and his
Senate colleagues John Sununu and Judd Gregg
to keep their hands off Social Security.
In an interview appearing in the March 3
edition on The Wall Street Journal, McCain
said, “As
part of Social Security reform, I believe
that private savings accounts are a part of
it -- along the lines that President Bush
proposed.”
The proposal Senator McCain now favors is
the same Bush privatization plan rejected by
the American people in 2005 for jeopardizing
the economic security of current and future
retirees and ravaging guaranteed benefits
for seniors and the disabled.
McCain as President would be a disaster for
seniors. If you want to read more about what
he has voted for and supported on senior and
other issues go to:
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/mccain.cfm?source=mccainrevealed
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MORAL HAZARD
By Ellen Goodman | March 21, 2008 Boston
globe
I DON'T know too many economists who get
confused with preachers. But there are times
when they talk about virtue and temptation
as if they were free-market holy rollers.
Consider the phrase that has been popping up
all over the Bear Stearns debacle: "moral
hazard." No, Moral Hazard is not the name of
a country-western singer. It's the phrase
economists use to explain why people
shouldn't be protected from the consequences
of their actions. In The Wall Street
Journal's definition, moral hazards are "the
distortions introduced by the prospect of
not having to pay for your sins."
The idea began as an argument against
insurance. If you had fire insurance, you
would be careless around matches. Zap, more
fires. In recent decades, it's been used as
a righteous reason for shredding safety
social nets and toughening laws like those
against declaring bankruptcy. Such safety
nets, it's argued, only encouraged more
sinners, excuse me, welfare mothers and
bankrupt families.
The
same language of morality has been used by
economic fundamentalists who don't want to
help homeowners who got subprime mortgage
loans and find themselves in deep
foreclosure weeds.
Mike Huckabee once said that it "is not the
purpose of government to prop people up from
every poor decision they make. . . . It
creates an enabling co-dependency." And as
recently as last weekend, Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson insisted that government
actions to prevent foreclosures would "do
more harm than they would do good."
I grant you that moral hazard is not a
myth. But most of the sermons railing
against the harm of helping others are
directed at the poorer pews.
We don't seem to worry about the moral
hazard of, say, protecting a CEO from his
failings. Need I remind you that Robert
Nardelli got $210 million in severance after
he hammered Home Depot? Or that he now
resides at the top of Chrysler?
This leads us right into the den of Bear
Stearns. Last weekend, while its chief
executive was off playing bridge, one of the
most aggressive cowboy firms in the mortgage
securities business collapsed. The
government brokered a deal with J.P. Morgan
Chase to buy the firm and guarantee its
loans with your tax dollars.
Bailout is too strong a word for what
happened. Teaspooned-out would be better.
The Bear Stearns worker bees looking at
their life savings and pensions disappear
are not flitting off to the beach, although
I was charmed to note that the company will
have grief counselors at hand. But it is
true that the government went to the rescue.
Suddenly, the risk of sin took a back seat
to the risk of a full-scale economic
disaster. As Representative Barney Frank,
chairman of the House Financial Services
Committee, says ruefully, "People in the
financial community were able to take
sectors of the economy hostage and we have
to pay a ransom. The best we can hope for is
to keep the ransom as low as possible and
help the least undeserving."
Is there a Sunday school lesson here?
Economic fundamentalists preach that the
market - that wonderfully anthropomorphized
creature - needs absolute freedom to
operate. The unregulated creativity to buy
and bundle mortgages made many of these
firms a real bundle. But when the scheme
tanked, they too ran for help. If we're
going to rescue, we have to regulate.
And before we wrap up the sermon, a last
word. If a
financial firm is "too big to fail" - a
status I've always aspired to - why aren't
homeowners? They too are on the brink of
destroying not only themselves but their
communities. At the very least, Frank
and Senator Chris Dodd have introduced
homeowner bills that would contain and share
the damage.
Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of
Republicans, used to say, "The nine most
terrifying words in the English language
are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here
to help.' " This notion infiltrated the
national consciousness. Any sort of
government help was framed as hapless,
useless or, yes, a moral hazard.
Reagan's line always got a belly laugh.
Well, folks, not in this Bear (Stearns)
market.
MORE BALONEY ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY
Trustee's Report Shows
Medicare and Social Security Sustainability
The Medicare and Social Security Trustees'
reports issued at the end of March confirmed
that
the programs do not face an immediate crisis,
while highlighting America's growing health
care problems.
The Social Security surplus is expected to
continue for more than three decades, with
the trust fund not set to expire until 2041.
Medicare's trust fund will be insolvent by
2019, due largely to continually rising
health care costs. Both dates are unchanged
from last year's account "Reports of
Medicare's death have been greatly
exaggerated," said Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA),
chairman of the House Ways and Means Health
Subcommittee. "Though the trigger has been
pulled by Republican ideologues, this year's
trustees report shows that Medicare remains
solvent and sustainable."
The Bush
Administration has used the report to renew
efforts to privatize both programs.
Under Medicare's 45% trigger law, the
President must reduce Medicare spending when
the program is expected to be more than 45%
funded by general government revenue for
more than two years - Tuesday's was the
third such consecutive warning. "The
President is using this artificial measure
to ignore America's real health care crisis
and protect big insurance company programs
that have already stolen years from
Medicare's solvency," said Edward Coyle,
Executive Director of the Alliance.
Currently, the first $102,000 of wages are
subject to the 12.4% payroll tax that funds
Social Security. Typically, half the tax is
paid by workers, and the other half is paid
by employers.
To keep the system solvent over the next 75
years, the trustees estimated that the
Social Security payroll tax rate would need
to increase to 14.1%, up from the current
12.4%.
In other words an increase in the payroll
tax of less than 2 percent would solve the
“Social Security problem” for some 75
years!! In addition much could be done just
by taxing wages over $102,000 as well
as wages under $102,000.
Social Security has always been a regressive
tax, taking more from the poor than the
rich. We can go a long way to saving the
program if we take the cap off earnings. The
cap hasn't kept pace with inflation. In 1983
some 25 years ago, the cap covered 90% of
earnings. For it to cover 90% of earnings
today, it would have to be $140,000.
In the Bangor Daily News today (April 1)
John Buell commented – “The case for tax
reform should begin by showing how our
current tax system isn’t fair. And the
unfairness lies not in overtaxing the rich.
“When all
levels of government are considered, poor
and lower middle-class citizens often pay a
higher percentage of their income in taxes
than do the wealthy. Once Social
Security tax (the employer’s part really
comes out of the paycheck of the worker) and
state and local sales and income taxes plus
assorted fees are considered, even lower
middle-class workers are paying a startling
percentage of their incomes to government.”
*****************************************************************
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