November 1999
Director of Retirees Report
Nels Schregardus
Page 3
I would like to take this opportunity to call your attention to a couple of bills now in Congress that pertain only to retirees, and I urge you to contact your Congressman to sponsor these bills if he or she has not already done so. The Senate bill is S-1102 and the House bill is H.R. 1422. Both of these bills address the way COLAs are figured for those of us over 62. The bills are entitled "CONSUMER PRICE INDEX FOR ELDERLY CONSUMERS ACT," better known as CPI-E. What they propose to do is to require the establishment of a CPI for elderly consumers to compute COLA increases for Social Security and Medicare benefits under Titles II and XVII of the Social Securities Act. COLAs for seniors are now lumped in with the CPI for the younger working people. Therefore we seniors actually receive a smaller COLA than we would get if they figured the CPI for those over 62 on a separate basis. This has been going on for approximately 15 years and would you believe Congress knew this. So I urge you to contact Congress and express your thoughts but make it short and sweet and to the point. I don’t know if you are aware of it or not but I have read that about ¾ of elderly Americans living in rural counties do not have the option of joining an HMO because none of the health plans in their area participate in Medicare. HMOs are attractive to seniors because many offer extra benefits such as prescription drugs, which are not usually covered by Medicare. What it amounts to is that because of the sparse population and the scarcity of health providers in rural areas it makes it difficult for HMOs to create the economics of scale that allow them to make a profit. HMOs have trouble signing up doctors and hospitals in rural areas because the health providers often do better financially by submitting bills to Medicare on their own. This was just a little piece for your information. That's it for now. I will see you next time.
