Catastrophic Illness Coverage

Your editorial, “Good Beginning,” is so right. The proposal is far too little. It doesn’t even begin to address the problems most elderly have to face.

Across the street from us are two elderly women--mother and daughter--93 and 72. The daughter is in the hospital right now. She’s a retired school teacher on a teacher’s pension and eligible only for a portion of Medicare. The mother must have money besides her Social Security, because prior hospital expenses for both of them (operations, broken bones, hip, etc.) have exceeded $40,000. They both use walkers and have to have someone come in to fix their meals, clean house, shop for them, take them on appointments (doctors, dentists, etc.) They tell me this alone is costing them $1,000 a month. They are fortunate that, so far, they have the money to meet this expense. Think how many there must be who don’t?

My husband and I are paying $51.90 a month for a policy with a $75 deductible clause that covers only $30 (8-hour shift) for in-hospital nursing care. No licensed practical nurse care or anything else outside the hospital! This kind of care is not offered in most supplemental coverage you find available. We realized that the in-hospital deal is superfluous. All hospitals have intensive care units with round-the-clock nursing. The only reason we took it out was to get a $75 deductible instead of $200.

Any number of people are paying $138 a month or more with this same company in order to be covered for medical expenses beyond the Medicare-eligible expense. At least $3 billion is being wasted on supplemental policies that include so many deductibles, restrictions, exclusions and omissions the elderly don’t understand that they take out duplicate, triplicate, or even nine and 10 overlapping policies.

Insurance companies use scare tactics by mailing out official looking pitches that appear to be from government agencies that scare senior citizens into answering.

IRYS N. STRANGE

Morro Bay