"In a letter delivered to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Sunday, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) demand an answer to a question now at the center of the Republican party's top legislative priority: Will repealing the health care law force seniors to reimburse the government for the $250 check they received in 2010 to help them pay for prescription drugs?
'We are particularly concerned that repeal would reverse the course of making prescription drugs more affordable for seniors,' Schumer and Menendez write. 'The [repeal] legislation approved by the House could require seniors to repay the government.'
One of the major goals of the Affordable Care Act is to close the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap, better known to most as the 'donut hole.' The law will fill that hole over a decade, and in 2010, that meant many seniors received a $250 rebate check."
"'It let's you make your own choice,' says Barbara Aplin, shouldering an oxygen tank on her way to the lunch line here at the senior Community Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She is speaking not of her meal options in 2011 but of so-called 'death panels,' the more colloquial name for the new Medicare rule now paying doctors to counsel this seventy-six-year-old ('and three-quarters!') and her fellow senior citizens about end-of-life care. If you listen to the new fear merchants from the right, the rule pushes seniors to opt out of medical treatment that might prolong their lives. But take an afternoon to listen to the actual grandmas, and you get a much different kind of scare. If her children don't listen to an end-of-life plan, Aplin says, 'I'll come back to haunt them.'"
What's getting Fox News's granny panties in a twist comes down to a new billing code — "voluntary" instead of "v66.7" — that the Obama administration added back in to Medicare regulation on New Year's Day after dropping it from the rather contentious Section 1233 of the health-care bill. But we couldn't find a single elderly American on Medicare who was against the provision.
"Death panels," now that they're going down in a slightly different way, don't strike those a bit closer to actual death as particularly deadly — and certainly not as anything new.
Here's something Fox News won't tell you: While the controversial billing code for an end-of-life conversation did not exist on Medicare forms until January 1, many doctors had the chat anyway — uncompensated. One primary-care physician told us that others found a way to bill "for the disease, and then add a v66.7 'encounter for palliative care.' And then I bill by time and code them usually a 99215, as it is usually forty-plus minutes."
With the new health-care regulation, she says she'll simply bill for "voluntary advance care planning." A different check box, as it were.
Linda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, [LBJ} joins with with the Alliance for Retired Americans to reassure U.S. seniors that health reform is in their interest, and in the interest of a healthy sustainable Medicare program. Recalling the achievements of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson -- "Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more" she says "Now it's time to complete the unfinished business of our generation."
"It's very difficult to be a Boomer or older and be against health care reform, because you may have ten years until you can limp over the finish line to Medicare, and those will be ten years of very expensive insurance– even if you work for a large corporation. Unfortunately, the sheer demographic impact of an aging population will drive up premiums as well as costs. And during that time, you may find yourself uninsurable if things go on the way they are now. And then if you get sick, you will be bankrupt. We will be forced to use the system more as we age, because we will need those inhalers, stents, radiation treatments, mammograms, hip replacements, and glycometers.
"We already know this, because we are either there, or have already been there. I spent ten years paying for my entire health care. I arrived at Medicare nearly unable to walk. Luckily, I had always taken care of myself and didn't have any internal problems, just orthopedic decrepitude from running and lifting weights. Still, I was damned glad to get on the public plan and get my hip replacement. Could I have waited another six months if I had been in Canada? Sure. What I wanted was to be free of pain and not have to pay $50,000 for that privilege.
"We are not afraid anyone will pull the plug on us. In fact, the closer we get to that time, the more we pray we can get someone to stop treating us when our conditions are hopeless and let us go quietly without pain and suffering, without toxic chemo that won't help or surgeries that are unproven and just weaken us further."
What CBS didn’t report is that ASA is currently offering a promotion to get AARP members to switch their allegiance. As Dissenting Justice reports, if seniors send in their torn AARP membership cards, they receive a two-year ASA membership for the price of one year.
ThinkProgress contacted an AARP spokesperson who said that while the organization is 'concerned' about the 60,000 members who have left the organization, the number needs to be put into perspective. The organization generally loses 300,000 members a month just due to membership lapses and death. But since July 1, AARP has had 1.5 million people renew their memberships and 400,000 new members sign up.
Past campaigns like the ASA one have been largely unsuccessful. Earlier this month, the American Family Association (AFA) urged its supporters to call and cancel their AARP memberships. According to an AARP spokesperson, just 15 percent of the people who called were actually even members in the first place.
CBS News "has learned" that "up to" 60,000 people have cancelled AARP memberships? Well, that sounds awfully fishy, doesn't it?
"Up to 60,000 people" could accurately describe 60,000 people, 50,000 people, 30,000 people, or two dozen people. Generally, people use the phrase "up to ____ people" when they want to focus your attention on a large number they don't know is actually true. If CBS actually knew there were 60,000 cancellations, they'd just say "60,000 people," without the "up to" wiggle words.
So, since CBS apparently has no idea how many people have cancelled memberships, how have they "learned" about this? It seems rather obvious that CBS "learned" this not by gaining access to AARP's records, or from an AARP official, but from the American Seniors Association, a right-wing fundraising organization featured in the CBS report. ASA is urging seniors to mail them torn-up AARP membership cards, which ASA will reward with half-off membership.
There's no reason to take ASA's claims about AARP's membership seriously -- they are not in any position to know, and have a clear interest in inflating the number of cancellations. That's almost certainly how CBS News "has learned" about the AARP membership cancellations -- ASA told them. And, since ASA has no idea how many people have actually cancelled AARP memberships, and ASA has a clear motivation for inflating those numbers, CBS had to include the "up to" wiggle words.
So, who is American Seniors Association? According to Attkisson's report, ASA is a plucky underdog conservative alternative to AARP, benefiting from spontaneous mass disgust with AARP and fighting valiantly for seniors.
But if you do a Nexis search for "American Seniors Association" -- or their previous name, "National Association of Senior Concerns," it seems they appeared virtually out of nowhere, just in time to get a profile on CBS News. Prior to the last week or so, they had sent out a press release about immigration, and announced plans to hold a Republican presidential primary debate (a debate that never happened.)
Go to ASA's "History" page, and you'll find nothing more than a few paragraphs ostensibly written by former Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall -- paragraphs that don't say much of anything beyond "We want to represent your values to government. We don't want to represent government's values to you."
Which values are those? What does this mean? Who knows! But send your check today!
What kind of organization is ASA -- a charity? A foundation? Is it a nonprofit, or a for-profit business? Who knows! ASA's web page doesn't say, and Attkisson doesn't tell us. But send your check today!
