Pitch not perfect: Seniors question Bush administration’s Medicare reforms

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, May 13, 2003 | 10:57 a.m.

A Bush administration official said Monday that proposed Medicare reforms will be good for the pocketbooks and ailments of senior citizens nationwide, but a group of them in Henderson responded with a dose of skepticism.

A packed room of retirees and others older than 65 raised more questions than there was time to answer as Nevada's two Republican representatives and a Health and Human Services official pitched the administration's plan for Medicare.

Early on in the meeting held at the Henderson Senior Center, Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter handed the reins over to Dr. Cristina Beato, principal deputy assistant secretary for health, who told the crowd of about 100 that three proposed changes to Medicare would help many of the 40 million who use the plan.

But many of those present, especially a group of veterans, responded to the pitch with a wait-and-see attitude.

"I'm tired of all these promises all the time," said Milton Duran, a World War II veteran at the meeting. "I've gone to other meetings like this and I don't think it'll materialize."

At one point, Porter stepped in to tell the crowd, "The reason we're here today is because we agree with you.

"The system is broken and the doctor is part of the solution," Porter said.

The plan as laid out by Beato was structured around offering Medicare users three options:

Continue receiving care as they currently do, with added access to discounted drugs and protection from the high costs of prescriptions, at no additional premium.

Enhance the Medicare plan with a PPO-type plan that would give seniors the same sorts of choices available to federal employees, including full coverage of prevention; and

Enroll in low-cost, high-coverage managed care plans, including subsidized drugs.

Beato said that Medicare was overdue for a reform since it had not kept pace with developments in science and technology since being introduced in 1965.

"It is a system that is ... so outdated it's irrelevant," she said.

President Bush has committed $400 billion over the next decade to pay for the reforms proposed, she said.

But no sooner did Beato finish her pitch for the program than dozens of hands shot up to lay out a list of problems in their own health care, ranging from being charged $500 for a three-mile ambulance ride to sudden increases in prescription drug prices.

After the meeting, Gibbons said President Bush faced one obstacle in trying to get Congress to craft legislation this year based on his proposal.

"There are 535 members of Congress, each one with an idea of how Medicare should be reformed," he said.

"The problem is everybody thinks their's is perfect. But we should stop selling out the good in hopes of getting the perfect," he said.

Reached at his Washington office, a spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said he had not seen the proposal offered by Beato, but that Berkley had opposed previous Bush administration proposals.

"The past proposals suffer from an over-reliance on privatization and market forces, which are not always reliable when it comes to critical social services and vulnerable citizens," said Michael O'Donovan, spokesman for Berkley.

"These proposals are often trying to encourage seniors to abandon Medicare in favor of an HMO-type plan, where they would no longer be the government's problem."

Berkley opposes privatizing Medicare, he said.

So does Don Fuller, a member of the National Silver Haired Congress, a group that lobbies for seniors.

"We're not in favor of HMOs as an alternative," he said.

Fuller said he was slightly encouraged by Monday's meeting. "At least somebody's thinking about what seniors need," he said.

On the other hand, he'd like to see the thinking turn into action.

"Hell, we've talked about this for several years. I'd like for somebody to come back and say, 'This is what we did.'

"A lot of these people are dying off," he said. "It's kind of sad that they wait until people are dead before they do something."