Friday, July 31, 2015
Staff report
WARREN
More than 52 million Americans rely on Medicare to pay for doctor visits, prescriptions, emergency-room visits and other health-care benefits.
It’s a benefit earned through paying into FICA, the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, generally through deductions from a worker’s paycheck.
Most people are aware that FICA pays for Social Security benefits; it’s less known that another, smaller amount also comes out to pay for Medicare.
“When you’re on Medicare, you really need Medicare to feed your family,” said Liz Knauf of North Bloomfield, co-chair of Alliance for Senior Action, a Trumbull and Mahoning counties organization.
Knauf and other supporters of the Medicare program had a party in Courthouse Square on Thursday to mark the birthday of Medicare 50 years ago, July 30, 1965, and urge the public to support it.
“They keep wanting to make cuts, but we are trying to prevent it,” Knauf said of federal legislators.
“Retirees in our area are struggling to get by, but they know how much worse things would be without Medicare,” said Norm Wernet, president of the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, the group that staged the party.
Wernet said 15 percent of Ohioans are older than 65, and they need to “speak up about Medicare to make sure that it is preserved for future generations.”
OARA secretary Melissa Long of Kent, former Cortland mayor, said the main focus of Medicare is keeping older people in their homes, including wellness programs and prevention such as shots for pneumonia and shingles.