Senior News March, 2002 Vol. 21. No.  3

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Working animals:Nevada has a job at Adult Day Health

Briefs

Opinion:Medicare reimbursement threatened

Rediscovering Northern California State Parks

Traveling smart: A few tricks to make the journey flow smoother

NutriMinute

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Opinion
Medicare reimbursement threatened
by Doris Osburn

Current medical service providers are apprehensive about next year's proposed five percent Medicare reimbursement reduction. The senior community needs to understand the implications this proposed scale back in reimbursement can have upon all recipients of Medicare services.

Health care providers are not nonprofit agencies that are required to offer their services or care to Medicare recipients. Much of their overhead is vested in the requirements laid down by the federal government to serve Medicare clients. Providers may well be forced into making the decision to refuse to accept Medicare patients. That prospect is not an attractive one to seniors.

The proposed five percent reduction in reimbursement for Medicare providers is for the next federal fiscal year. Therefore we have time to address the consequences in advance.

Seniors must rally and inform their elected representatives that a reduction in reimbursement to providers is unacceptable. More than that, we must remind them that reimbursement for Medicare services would not be a problem if the Social Security "trust fund" were made whole by returning the Social Security taxes that have been spent for other purposes. That sum exceeds $5 trillion.

This is not simply a problem of the senior population, it is highway robbery for today's wage earners. While the federal government continues to throw our Social Security tax withholding into the general fund, there is no hope for the system to remain stable or return even the amount paid in to current and future wage earners.

It is now time to begin work in earnest to inform and demand action from the current office holders. Rep. Mike Thompson and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer need an avalanche of mail or phone calls alerting them to our opposition to any reduction in Medicare's share of the reimbursement to health care providers.

Doris Osburn of Fortuna spent seven years as a member of the California Senior Legislature. As a CSL member, she introduced the proposal to restore the Social Security trust fund and separate it from the federal budget general fund. That proposal carried by New's York's then Senator Moynihan sparked the now languishing debate on Social Security.

Osburn's e-mail is bigdlittleo@juno.com.