Clinton Pitch on Medicare a Hit With Seniors

President Clinton pitched his Medicare overhaul plan Wednesday to an easy audience--a group of senior citizens--as he began a campaign to win political support for his proposal.

He framed the debate as one of choices over how best to spend the fruits of a booming economy.

Under the president’s plan, $794 billion of the nation’s anticipated budget surplus would be earmarked to provide prescription drugs and make other changes in Medicare. “We can afford this,” he said. “If this is not done, it is because somebody made a different decision to do something else with the money.”

That “somebody,” in this case, would be Congress, where Republicans hold a majority. Some Republicans in Congress oppose the drug benefit because, they say, two-thirds of the elderly already are covered by some form of prescription insurance.

Clinton’s proposal, unveiled Tuesday, is built around the prescription drug benefit, which initially would pay for as much as $1,000 in pharmaceuticals each year. It would infuse the program with cash from the budget surplus to keep it solvent through 2027 and would seek to cut costs by imposing competitive bidding and other reforms.

Under Clinton’s plan, Medicare beneficiaries would pay $24 a month for the prescription coverage when it goes into effect in 2002. A 50% co-payment would be charged for each prescription. Thus, someone whose yearly drug expenses are $2,000 would pay $1,000 for those drugs, while Medicare would pay the rest.

The coverage and premiums would increase in stages to an annual maximum of $5,000 in 2008. Medicare would pay up to $2,500, and the monthly premium would be $44.

There would be no premium charged to individuals with annual incomes below $11,000 and couples with incomes of less than $17,000.

Hanna Bratman, a 79-year-old widow from Chicago, spelled out for Clinton the difference prescription coverage would make for her.

Her white hair forming a halo barely visible behind the presidential lectern she used as she introduced him, Bratman said that Medicare paid for her late husband’s heart-bypass surgery and other health care needs. But when it comes to the three inhalers on which she is dependent for treatment of asthma, she said, “I’m on my own.”

“I have to pay for it, and, Mr. President, I want to tell you, it is expensive,” she said. Each year, she said, she spends $2,800 on the medications--10% of her income.

“My husband and I worked hard all our lives. We saved. We scrimped. We did the right things,” she said, to murmurs of recognition and support from the audience. Now, she said, “the Medicare program we’ve come to rely on is not there for us.”

Clinton, mentioning Bratman frequently during the half-hour speech he gave after her introduction, predicted that, as drug prices rise and private insurers drop drug coverage programs, about 15 million elderly people will have no prescription coverage.

“This is not the way to honor people after a lifetime of work and good citizenship,” he said. “No American should have to choose between fighting infections and fighting hunger, between skipping doses and skipping meals. . . . We are now prosperous enough to do better than that.”