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Date Created:
June 25, 2008
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Massachusetts
From the Cape to the Berkshires, this is a group for all AARP members in the Bay State.
  Post to Topic     Print   House Health Reform Bill Helps Seniors
http://www.aarp.org/community/groups/displayTopic.bt?groupId=8832&topicId=5321032
AARPMA said:
on November 5, 2009 12:25 PM ET

 

Last year, Patricia Liberti of Salem and her husband spent upwards of $15,000 on health care costs. Now disabled, Liberti worked as a nurse for 38 years, until she developed coronary-artery disease in the late 1990’s. She and her husband, also disabled, are both on Medicare and pay 100 percent of health insurance and drug coverage premiums. 
 
Each September, Liberti falls into the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap or “doughnut hole” – paying nearly $1000 a quarter once her drug coverage exceeds the limit. “Each time I hit the doughnut hole, I have to dip into my retirement savings to pay for my medicine. Sooner or later, there won’t be any savings left,” she explained. As a former nurse, Liberti knows firsthand the complications that can occur when elders neglect to take their medications and has become an advocate for fixing the health care system. To hear more from Liberti, watch here .
 
AARP has been working tirelessly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to craft a health care reform plan that meets the needs of AARP’s nearly 40 million members and all older Americans. Today, AARP endorsed the House health reform bill. AARP MA State Director Deborah Banda believes the Affordable Health Care for America Act, improves benefits for people like Liberti. The House bill:
 
  • Protects Medicare for seniors and improves their benefits;
  • Closes the Medicare “doughnut hole” and allows Medicare to negotiate with drug companies, and
  • Prevents insurance companies from discriminating against older Americans and from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
 
To hear more from Banda, watch here . To read more about AARP’s endorsement of the Affordable Health Care for America Act click here .
 
Have you fallen into the doughnut hole? Do you struggle with prescription drug costs?
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