President Obama has met a lot of opposition to his new health-care law, but today, he tried to win over senior citizens as many watched his live broadcast about changes in Medicare.
Senior citizens may be one of the most concerned groups about health care. After all, as many people age, their health starts to fail or at least become more fragile. And most senior citizens are on a limited budget. With medical care and prescriptions rising, the cause for alarm is understandable.
Under the new health-care law, seniors on Medicare will begin receiving $250 drug rebate checks in the mail this week. About 80,000 are expected to receive this check in the first wave of mailings. By the end of the year, the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that about 4 million senior will have received a check.
This $250 is aimed at closing up the Medicare “donut hole,” an area where seniors exceed what they can receive for basic Medicare coverage, but aren’t eligible for catastrophic coverage and are forced to pay for their own prescriptions. Seniors whose prescriptions cost more than $2,830 this year must pay 100 percent afterwards until they can quality for the catastrophic insurance. This “donut hole” is expected to be closed by the end of 2020.
Are seniors happy about this rebate? The overall opinion seems to be lackluster at best. Some seniors look at the $250 as better than nothing, while others say the check wasn’t even a drop in the bucket to what they were already out.
Obama also promised seniors that he would cut waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare system by the end of next year. Perhaps better news for the seniors was that next year, those on Medicare will receive 50 percent off brand name drugs and the government will begin subsidizing generic drugs. The government hopes that by 2020, Medicare recipients will only have to pay 25 percent of the cost on generic drugs.
That sounds good on paper, but by 2020, many of today’s seniors won’t be with us anymore. And, when they cannot afford their prescriptions, some seniors skip their pills, which can put their health at risk and may land them in the hospital, running up health care costs further.