On the Horizon
Note to Next U.S. President
By Robert Hayes, MRC News, Fall 2003
Suddenly, as leaves in the northern half of the United States turned golden, the 2004 presidential election began looking more and more like a horse race. No fewer than nine Democrats are seeking their party’s nomination. And at least half of those candidates have a realistic shot at the White House.
Now is the moment to push both the President and the leading Democratic candidates to embrace–firmly and on the record–key reforms to protect and improve Medicare.
First, there are the basic moral questions: where does each candidate stand on the urgent need to achieve universal health care, and how will each candidate bring that about in the near future? Most Democratic candidates are carving out specific programs to bring a level of health care to a significant number of the nation’s nearly 44 million uninsured citizens.
Next is the future of Medicare. Last summer the House of Representatives passed legislation that, in 2010, would slowly but surely begin to turn Medicare into a voucher system, leaving older and sicker Americans to choose between paying their Medicare premiums or meeting other survival needs, such as housing and food. Some Democratic candidates have harshly criticized this proposal. Others are more cautious. The White House is ideologically aligned with the House.
Then there are the smaller-scale reforms that a new president should embrace on Inauguration Day. The Medicare Rights Center is confronting the candidates of both parties in Iowa and New Hampshire to pin them down on these key reforms.
One, the next president should pledge–regardless of the outcome of this fall’s Congressional prescription drug debate–to bring Medicare into the 21st century with an affordable and comprehensive drug benefit. A president must commit to legislation that favors affordable drugs over pharmaceutical profits and recognizes that Medicare, not private insurance companies, has better served the American people.
Two, the next president must commit to fill some of the largest gaps in Medicare coverage. Medicare mental health benefits should be equal to benefits for other covered services. It is wrong, and the next president should say so, for Medicare to cover 80 percent of covered services for physical care, but just 50 percent of mental health care costs.
Three, the next president should create a $3,000 out-of-pocket catastrophic cap to protect people with Medicare who have serious health care needs. This would assist a small minority of people with Medicare by doing what social insurance should do: protect the neediest men and women who face grave illnesses and large expenses.
Four, the next president should promise to support legislation to end the unconscionable two-year waiting period for a person with a severe disability to be eligible for Medicare coverage. More than 1.3 million people are languishing in this limbo, and 400,000 have no insurance during this period of maximum need.
The Medicare Rights Center, working with allied community groups, is putting these demands, along with detailed background information, before each of the major presidential candidates. MRC’s Washington policy director is bringing these positions to the White House chief health advisor and MRC field staff are doing the same with Democratic candidates as they campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Most of all, MRC is revealing the human faces behind these policy positions. In any venue that we can find, MRC is bringing voters whose lives are impacted by health care policy into the public debate, looking to strike genuine empathy with candidates and voters.
These are rocky times for the U.S. economy and for the American people. But these are also times of opportunity. Republicans, Democrats and Independents should remember what the political world now knows so well: every vote counts.
If you care about health care, let the candidates know the price of your vote.