Pepper Opens Bid for Wider Medicare Coverage

Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.) on Monday opened a national campaign to add nursing home care to Medicare benefits, saying that it would be a “tragedy” if Congress limited coverage to hospital expenses.

“If you don’t let members of Congress know you care, I’m afraid they’re going to be timid,” Pepper told cheering delegates to the National Council on the Aging convention here. “Let’s meet at long last this challenge to our goodness, to our compassion, to our concern,” he said.

Pepper, one of Congress’ most vocal and influential advocates for the elderly, chose Chicago for the opening shot in a battle to expand benefits for the nation’s 30 million Medicare recipients. The campaign for his plan to have the government help pay for nursing home stays, prescription drugs, eye care and dental care will also take him to California, Pennsylvania, New York and other states.

Medicare, available to those over 65 and to 3 million disabled people of all ages, currently covers some hospital and doctor bills. Patients now pay $520 for their first day in a hospital, are covered for the next 59 days and, after that, must pay $130 of each day’s bill. Medicare also covers 80% of physicians’ fees, under an approved government schedule.

Reagan Backs Limit

The Reagan Administration has endorsed a $2,000 limit on a Medicare beneficiary’s out-of-pocket expenses for hospital and doctor bills combined, regardless of the number of days of hospitalization.

“The Congress and the Administration are now committed to enacting catastrophic health care legislation this session of Congress,” said Pepper. “We must make sure that the plan they adopt is one which covers the real, bankrupting health care needs of Americans--a plan which covers care in the home and care in a nursing home instead of one which stops the moment one leaves a hospital.”

The federal government covers nursing home bills under the Medicaid welfare program, which is available only to patients who have exhausted their savings and most of their incomes. Surveys have found that the vast majority of Americans over 65 mistakenly believe that the Medicare program covers nursing home bills.

Pepper said that his plan would be financed through an $800-a-year premium paid by Medicare beneficiaries. A patient would make no additional payments, and would be covered for an unlimited number of days in a hospital or a nursing home, as well as full doctor care.

If the $800 annual premium would not raise enough money to pay for the program, Pepper said, the Medicare payroll tax--now limited to the first $43,800 of income--could be extended to all salaries.

Robert B. Helms, assistant secretary of health and human services, told the convention, however, that the nation cannot afford the Pepper plan.

“We feel we cannot accept a new program” that could cost as much as $40 billion a year, Helms said.