Advocates Urge Congress to Protect Older Adults during Current Budget Considerations
This week, the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations (LCAO), a coalition of 69 national advocacy groups including the Medicare Rights Center, sent a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate advocating for the end of the sequester and the adoption of the Fiscal Year 2014 budget, absent proposals that cut benefits or shifts costs to older adults and people with disabilities.
The coalition cited specific proposal that should be excluded from the budget, including:
•Shifting health care costs to people with Medicare and
•Decreasing the Social Security benefit by implementing a chained Consumer Price Index (chained CPI).
Proposals that shift costs or reduce benefits fail to address the real threat to our nation’s economic health—rising costs throughout the health care system. At the same time, most people with Medicare cannot afford to pay more for their care—half of all people with Medicare live on annual incomes of $22,500 or less, and the average Medicare household already spends 15 percent of their household income on health care compared to only 5 percent among non-Medicare households.
In contrast, LCAO supports solutions that promote a strong economy, such as increases in revenue, as well as reducing spending in targeted ways that do not put at risk the health and economic security of older adults and people with disabilities.
Read the letter.
http://webiva-downton.s3.amazonaws.com/402/06/2/3041/LCAO_Budget_Ltr_103113_Budget.pdf