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Valley seniors appeal to Brown to keep Social Security intact
YOUNGSTOWN
Gloria Hobbs passed out stickers reading “Hands Off Social Security.”
Hank Sadinski, a former steel worker who said he lost his health care and life insurance and some of his pension, is active in the Alliance for American Manufacturing. He offered buttons saying “Keep It Made In America.”
Hobbs and Sadinski, Youngstown residents, were among about 100 mostly senior citizens who crowded into the Senior Independence Senior Center on Fifth Avenue on Wednesday to hear Democrat U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown who opposes Republican efforts to privatize Social Security and Medicare.
Brown said the U.S. House’s approval of Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan’s 2012 spending bill that cuts $6 trillion over the budget submitted by President Barack Obama would “end Medicare as we know it.”
Brown said the additional costs for Ohio seniors under the proposed Republican budget would be an estimated $89 million in additional prescription drug costs in the first year, and that individual seniors would pay an additional $9,300 a year for prescription drugs by 2020.
Brown said the Republican plan to privatize Social Security and Medicare and replace the government health-care system with a voucher system that would give adults $8,000 a year to buy insurance has been rejected by the U.S. Senate.
Under the Republican plan, Brown said, seniors would soon be facing higher costs for prescription drugs, annual wellness visits and preventive care.
Brown said Medicare has served people very well since its inception in 1965. But he admitted it is too expensive, and costs have to be reduced — but not on the backs of seniors and not this dramatically.
Other speakers at Wednesday’s event included Joe Rossi, chief executive officer of the Area Agency on Aging; Melissa Long, former mayor of Cortland and board member of the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, and Virginia Wepfer of Lake Milton.
The issue is can seniors continue to have medical care that they can afford, Long said. Most seniors want to pay their fair share, but a fair share is where Medicare is at this point, she said.
“If Sen. Paul Ryan’s voucher system goes through, affordable health care will disappear,” Long said.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Wepfer said of Medicare. She is a nurse who has cared for others and has medical problems of her own.
Medicare is portable, and individuals can get health care anywhere and not have to worry about going to a doctor or a hospital when needed, she said.
Brown said more than 42,000 Ohio seniors would have to pay for annual wellness visits under the Republican plan, at a cost of nearly $4.5 million annually.
It would also require seniors to pay deductibles, co-insurance, and copayments for many preventive services currently covered by Medicare, including mammograms; screening for colorectal, cervical and prostate cancer; cholesterol and other cardiovascular screenings; diabetes screening and flu shots.
Brown said he is listening to seniors who tell him that Social Security and Medicare are government programs that work and should not be dismantled.
“The Republican plan does nothing but take away benefits in the long run, and no one seems to know how the voucher program would work,” Sadinski said.
“I don’t want Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid privatized. I’m afraid of losing my medical care, and if I lost Social Security I would probably be homeless,” Hobbs said.