Elder Abuse, Health Care Highlighted in 4th AARP Presidential Candidate Forum

Doug Lehman, a 66-year-old retired real estate agent from Sioux City, said he grapples every day with the high cost of insulin. “Ten years ago,” Lehman told Yang, “I became insulin dependent after a kidney transplant. I need seven shots a day and 32 pills.”

The price for his medications has increased steadily over the past five years, with a recent jump of $500 a month. “At 66 years old, I’ve had to seek another part-time job to cover that cost,” Lehman said. “If I wasn’t able to work, I couldn’t get the anti-rejection drugs necessary to keep my kidney functioning.”

“What will you do,” he asked Yang,” to reduce the cost of prescriptions and lifesaving meds?”

“These companies only know one language,” Yang replied. “It’s dollars and cents. We have to hit them where it hurts.” Yang would do that by allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription prices with drugmakers and telling pharmaceutical companies that if they continue to charge Americans much more than they charge consumers in other countries, the U.S. government will license and manufacture those medicines.

Every candidate who has participated in this week’s forums has expressed support for allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies — and allowing drugs to be imported from Canada and other countries as long as those medicines are safe. 

More about AARP's 2019 Iowa Candidate Forums

Confronting Elder Abuse

Aubury Krueger attended Friday’s forum so she could ask Warren about what she would do to combat elder abuse.

“I’ve witnessed the heartbreak of a mother whose adult son beat her, belittled her and took all of her money so she couldn’t pay rent,” said Krueger, 45, of Council Bluffs, who has worked for her area aging agency for more than 15 years. “Millions of older Americans fall victim to abuse, including neglect and financial exploitation, every year.

“As Americans live longer and our population ages, what will you do to increase elder supportive and protective services,” she asked Warren, “so people can get the help they need, when they need it?”

Warren pointed to her fight to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). “That little bureau has been out there on behalf of vulnerable seniors,” the Massachusetts senator said, adding that the CFPB has “an office that is explicitly on this question of targeting and exploiting seniors financially.”

Warren tied the issue of elder abuse to the need to shore up Social Security. “When people can be financially independent it gives them a little more protection,” she said.

Warren favors eliminating the cap on Social Security payroll taxes. In 2019, employees and employers pay Social Security taxes only on the first $133,000 of income. Williamson said she would “scrap the cap,” while O’Rourke said he would lift it, without specifying whether he would eliminate it altogether. Yang’s retirement security plan centers on providing what he calls a $12,000-a-year freedom dividend for all American adults.

Lifelong educator Jean Carlson questioned Williamson about the federal government’s role in education. “I am a mom, a grandmother and a lifelong Iowa resident,” said the 70-year-old retired teacher and elementary school principal from Sioux City. “How are you planning to improve public education … will you provide our students with needed mental health services such as nurses and counselors?”

“If I’m president we must have mandated high-quality education for every child in America, wherever they live,” Williamson said, criticizing the system of funding schools through local property taxes, which she said creates inequality. “Every school in America should be a palace of learning and a palace of the arts because we say so.”