Benefits: Elderly Manage, Children Hurt : Senior Citizens Hold Their Own as Aid Remains Largely Unscathed

For Vernon and Lenora Anderson, Tuesday prayer meetings and Wednesday Bible classes help break the monotony, the long days of television and naps and visits to the doctor.

Lenora, 79, does the cooking and cleaning in spite of painful arthritis. And at times when Vernon, 83, a stroke victim who can walk only a few steps without help, needs extra medical treatments, their budget will go through the kind of temporary crisis that means the grocery bill may not be paid on time.

“We ain’t hungry or anything like that,” Lenora said. “Of course, there’s a lot of things we could use that we don’t have. But as far as suffering, no, we’re not.”

For that they can thank their combined Social Security income of $759 a month, coupled with their federally subsidized rental apartment. For the retired butcher and his wife, as for millions of other elderly Americans, the monthly checks from Washington provide the foundation for a decent--if straitened--standard of living.

Although the “Reagan revolution” has slowed the growth of government spending, the big social insurance programs for the elderly--Social Security and Medicare--have survived relatively unscathed.

Lenora, a retired inspector at a wine bottling plant, says President Reagan has not made much difference to her and her husband. “I don’t see that we’re any worse or any better,” she said. “We’re holding our own.”

Yet if that sounds like a meager accomplishment, the Andersons and the elderly as a group have fared better than most other financially vulnerable segments of the population--especially the nation’s impoverished children, whose aid programs have been cut substantially during the Reagan years.

In 1980, the year before President Reagan took office, Washington spent $153.5 billion, or 27% of its budget, for the two mammoth programs, which benefit virtually all Americans 65 and older regardless of income. For this fiscal year, expenditures should hit $269.4 billion, or 28% of total outlays, and the fiscal 1987 budget that Reagan will propose to Congress Wednesday is expected to continue the trend.

‘Right to Be Protected’

“People pay in and earn the right to be protected,” said John Rother, legislative director for the 20-million-member American Assn. of Retired Persons.

Life still isn’t easy for millions of elderly persons struggling with limited incomes and rising medical bills. But automatic annual raises in Social Security benefits enable the 36 million recipients to keep pace with inflation. For the first time in American history, the poverty rate for the elderly--12.4%--is less than the rate for the general population.

Without Social Security, the Andersons of North Little Rock would be destitute. Lenora pointed to a drawer in her coffee table where she keeps her Social Security checks. “This is all I have, honey,” she said. “That’s every penny I have coming in.”

Lenora receives $286 a month from Social Security and Vernon gets $473--that is their entire income. He was “a very good butcher” for 40 years, his wife boasted, but receives no private pension. The Andersons have neither a savings nor a checking account. When there are bills to pay, Lenora buys money orders.

“By the time I pay my bills, I don’t have anything left,” said Lenora, a plump woman with short, reddish-brown hair and round, pink glasses. “I don’t see any reason to go out and trouble with a bank.”

40 Years as Butcher

On a recent Saturday, Lenora wore slacks and a neat, striped blouse tied at the neck, and Vernon, a tall, lean, white-haired man with piercing blue eyes, wore slacks and a tie. In his shirt pocket were several pens and pencils. He doesn’t use them anymore but got accustomed to having them in his pocket during 40 years of writing meat orders.

Lenora said Vernon has lost his memory, and the doctor has warned her not to leave him alone much because he might fall and hurt himself. “The doctor didn’t know whether he could give us anything (for) him,” she said. “But you see, they don’t know all that much. I’ve still got him.”

Lenora usually cooks vegetables and a meat loaf--or sometimes pork chops or sausages--for dinner. “We have some kind of meat every day,” she said, nodding to her husband, “because he likes his meat. If he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t eat.”

The household expenses every month include, according to Lenora’s best guess, $199 for the apartment, $165 for groceries, $55 for medicine, $18 for the telephone, $5 for a newspaper subscription and $22.58 for an insurance policy that will pay for their burial in Bald Knob, a rural community 150 miles away where Vernon was born.

Lenora said she doesn’t allow herself to think about what life would be like if her Social Security benefits were cut.

That nearly happened in 1982, when the Social Security trust fund was rapidly running out of money. Benefits, rising with double-digit inflation, were growing faster than the tax revenues generated by a sluggish economy.

Rescue Package

Reagan and Congress, after sparring bitterly for political advantage, agreed on a rescue package in 1983--a combination of spending cuts and tax increases totaling $169 billion through the end of the 1980s--to assure the fund’s solvency and keep the checks flowing to the Andersons and millions of other beneficiaries.

“It was a package of shared pain,” wrote Paul Light of the National Academy of Public Administration.

The 36 million Social Security recipients were hit with a six-month delay in the cost-of-living allowance, which is now granted in January instead of the previous July. And about 3 million of the most affluent retirees had to pay income taxes on up to half of their benefits for the first time.

But workers lost far more than retirees. Their Social Security taxes were raised, and younger workers--those least likely to pay attention to the words “Social Security” in a newspaper headline--suffered the biggest hit of all: Congress decided to raise the eligibility age for retirement with full benefits, now 65, in stages to 67, effective in the year 2027.

This means that members of the “baby boom” generation will work somewhat longer than their parents and grandparents before qualifying for Social Security benefits, and will pay substantially more in taxes in the meantime.

Revamped Medicare

At about the same time that Congress overhauled the Social Security system, it also revamped the Medicare program for the elderly, which was threatening to collapse into bankruptcy by 1987 because of the soaring cost of hospital bills. The old system of reimbursement for all costs was scrapped; instead, hospitals were given a fixed payment for patients depending on their ailments. Congress has frozen the payment levels for the last two years, and Reagan is expected to propose no increase in 1987.

These changes have squeezed hospitals more than they have the 30 million Medicare beneficiaries. Although Vernon, a stroke victim who has trouble breathing as well as walking, was hospitalized once last year, the Andersons have no evidence that he was treated any differently because of the Medicare rescue.

He might not always be so lucky. Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Aging Committee and a vociferous critic of Medicare’s new payment system, says that if Vernon is hospitalized again, the odds are that he will be discharged “quicker and sicker.” Because the new system encourages hospitals to cut corners, he says, hospitals are rushing patients out as quickly as possible, and the quality of care may suffer.

On the other hand, the new system restored Medicare to solvency, and the Health and Human Services Department says the Andersons can rest assured that the program will escape bankruptcy until at least 1998.

But Medicare is pinching harder for other reasons. When Vernon was hospitalized last year, he was billed for the first $400 before Medicare took over and paid the rest. The deductible, which equals the average cost of a day in the hospital, was a more manageable $180 as recently as 1980--and it has already risen to $492 this year.

‘Medigap’ Insurance

The Andersons, like 70% of Medicare enrollees, have a private health insurance policy to fill in the gaps left by Medicare’s coverage of hospital costs. They spend $132 every three months for their “medigap” insurance, which paid half of Vernon’s $400 hospital bill last year.

Medicare coverage itself now costs the Andersons $15.50 a month, up from $9.60 when Reagan took office. Because Medicare covers only 80% of reasonable and customary doctors’ fees and does not cover such services as prescription drugs and eyeglasses, the elderly still pay for about half of their overall medical costs.

Depend on Store Credit

When the Andersons’ medical and drug expenses are especially high, they depend on credit at their local grocery store. They don’t go out for a meal or a movie, although friends occasionally take Lenora out for a catfish dinner.

“I always bring a plate home to him,” she said, nodding across the living room at her husband. “Whatever I get, he gets. I’m good like that.”

Lenora said her husband is totally dependent on her. “He won’t lie down and take a nap unless I go back there with him,” she said, pointing to their bedrooms.

The Andersons’ apartment is small but pleasant. Family and religious pictures cover the walls. On the outside door is a little sign that says, “Heritage House, where retirement is an active way of life.”

Heritage House is a federally subsidized apartment project for the elderly and the handicapped, and the Andersons moved there a year ago because they feared that they would soon be unable to afford the cost of utilities at their duplex apartment.

The 10-story brick complex, one of the few high-rises in town, has 201 apartments overlooking a small, tree-covered city park in North Little Rock, a quiet community of 62,000 situated on gently rolling hills across the wide, muddy Arkansas River from Little Rock.

Rent 30% of Income

Residents pay rent equal to 30% of their income after deducting medical expenses. The Andersons pay $199 a month in rent and utilities for a two-bedroom unit that would cost $306 a month in the private market, according to William Clements, executive director of the North Little Rock Housing Authority.

The average federal subsidy for Heritage House apartment units is $24.65 a month. Despite the budget austerity of the Reagan era, Housing and Urban Development Department officials say that the subsidy is no smaller than it would have been five years ago.

Rising Housing Demand

However, opportunities are dwindling for elderly couples like the Andersons to live in subsidized housing. In 1981, for example, the government spent $698 million to build 14,728 units of subsidized housing for the elderly, but last year it allocated only $557 million for 12,416 new units--not enough to keep up with rising demand.

Heritage House defies the popular stereotype of dreary and depressing government housing. Glass cases in the lobby proudly display the work of residents in crafts classes: beads, baby blankets and needlepoint plaques of the razorback hog, which is the state animal.

The North Little Rock Women’s Club offers music classes in the building, and about 10 of the elderly residents belong to a band. There are ballroom dancing classes and a pool table. During the summer, the women’s club holds a hamburger cookout and a watermelon feast for the building.

The Andersons, however, do not take advantage of the building’s activities because of Vernon’s poor health. “I don’t do nothing but sit in this chair,” Vernon said.

He says this without complaint. “You’ll get used to it when the time comes,” he advised a younger visitor.

Lenora said she feels no bitterness about her husband’s poor health, their tight financial situation and their uneventful life now that they are old.

“It’s hard in a sense, but you should realize that some day you will have to face it,” she said. “You can get used to anything, I guess. I knew this was coming. Everybody should.”

Maura Dolan reported from North Little Rock and Robert A. Rosenblatt from Washington.