Assets will bar many low-income elderly from getting drug benefit

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON - As many as 2.4 million low-income people will miss out on generous savings when the Medicare prescription-drug benefit begins next year because they have too many personal assets.

Even though their incomes are low enough to qualify for coverage that pays 85 to 98 percent of their drug costs, millions of retirees won't get the benefit because the size of their bank and retirement accounts and other assets makes them ineligible for it.

Despite those assets, most of these people are far from wealthy.
...
By excluding low-income people from better drug coverage, experts say, the asset caps hurt retirees whose only transgression was doing what most experts and the government advised: saving for their retirement years.

"Now those who listened to that message and saved are the ones who are being penalized because they can't get the (low-income) benefits," Rice said. "I don't think there was any ill intent on the part of Congress, but the benefit was set up in a way that needy people will be unnecessarily disqualified."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11757547.htm

[rodeodance]

1. why does the article give Congress a pass on this?--they are

the ones who wrote the bill!!--and should have known the effects of what they write. stupids all!!

......."Now those who listened to that message and saved are the ones who are being penalized because they can't get the (low-income) benefits," Rice said. "I don't think there was any ill intent on the part of Congress, but the benefit was set up in a way that needy people will be unnecessarily disqualified."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11757547.htm

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. -Tennyson

[rodeodance]

2. what a bunch of capola

A disproportionate share are older, widowed women with modest incomes who live alone, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly 60 percent of these women, and others who live alone, have life savings of no more than $51,500, the study found. For married couples, the figure is $63,000.


That's not a lot of money for retirement savings, said David Rice, a UCLA researcher who co-authored the Kaiser study.


The cutoff for eligibility in personal assets is $11,500 for individuals and $23,000 for married couples. Republican lawmakers added that restriction to the Medicare Modernization Act because they were under pressure to keep the drug benefit's 10-year price tag below the widely touted but erroneous figure of $400 billion. The benefit would have cost another $10 billion without the limits, Medicare figures show. In fact, the whole program is now estimated to cost $534 billion over 10 years, with some estimates as high as $1.2 trillion.

[Daphne08]

10. I doubt Congress even read the damn bill!

[Sugarbleus]

3. Really sad.......really indecent too

I'm very low income and disabled. I get Medicare with medicaid; "medi-medi" they call it. Supposedly the medicaid pays for the drug benefit I would ordinarily have to pay because my income and/or assests are too low.

However, there is no guarantee that this will stay the same as I approach very old age (if I make it that far).

I truely feel deep sympathy for those elderly who are caught in the catagory just above mine. Not wealthy enough to afford those drug benefits but having just a scosh too many assests/income to get any relief.

Isn't this a great place to live? :eyes: We approach old age or disability and no longer have merely the dread of natural death but the FEAR OF SUFFERING and daily anxiety before it comes! Thank you, American Nazi Party!!


Whadda country!

[Roland99]

4. But of course. All of that money isn't supposed to go to people.

It's supposed to go to the drug companies and the insurance companies.

[Erika]

5. This is sickening

and should be thrown back in Bushco's face.

[question everything]

6. Great choice: deplete modest savings and go on welfare

or buy medicine

So much for Bush's "ownership society" or GOP love of "self sustained individuals."

But, hey, as long as the pharmaceuticals can squeeze the taxpayers - why not?

[tibbir]

7. I'm 53, permanently dsabled and on Medicare.

Even though my only income is SS-D , my assets are somewhat higher than the level to qualify me for the "free" drug benefit under the new Medicare law.

I just wonder if the democrats will ever develop a spine. They knew the asst test was there when they passed the legislation and they bowed to the power of the pharmaceuticsl companies just the same as the republikans.

So countless others and I are thrown to the wolves. The law won't allow Medicare to negotiate for better prices, won't allow people like me who take a lot of medicine to buy our prescriptions from Canada and the break in the bill for low-income Medicare recipients is a sham. I'd bee willing to bet that people with assets as low as the bill calls for in the asset test are on Medicaid as well, which already has a drug benefits of sorts.

If it weren't for my doctors who give me samples I'd have to go to the county medical system for medical care and prescriptions - a joke unto itself.

[Rose Siding]

8. The Democrats fought this bill

snip>
The legislative battle over Medicare drug coverage ended in a controversial pre-dawn House vote on Nov. 22, 2003, when GOP leaders extended the roll call for nearly three hours to twist enough arms to pass the measure. The White House and its allies repeatedly said the 10-year cost -- from 2004 to 2013 -- would be about $400 billion.

Soon after the bill's passage, the White House revised its projection to $534 billion. Last March, Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, said administration officials had threatened to fire him if he disclosed his belief in 2003 that the drug benefit would cost as much as $600 billion.

"An ethical cloud has hung over the Republican Medicare law since it was passed in the dark of night more than a year ago," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday. "Congress must have oversight hearings on the Republican Medicare prescription drug law and reopen it to hold down costs."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12118-2005Feb9.html

The repub leadership went so far as to threaten the career of one their member's children if he didn't vote for the measure.

[MountainLaurel]

9. Do homes count as assets?

A few years ago, a friend's father was trying to get government assistance in paying for a stay in a long-term care facility: He's in the final stages of MS, and has almost no use of his muscles: He can lay in bed and talk, but everything else must be done fo him. I remember that the house had to be sold before SSI or Medicare would pay for his hospital stay, because otherwise he was too "wealthy." This was a small, old home in the Middle-of-Nowhere Appalachia.

Is the situation same in this case as well? I'm thinking of my grandmother, who relies on my granddad's VA and SS survivor benefits as well as food stamps to survive, but owns the house where she's lived for 50 years -- it's probably only worth $75K, but might be enough to disqualify her.