What's Good About Health Care Reform for Seniors?

A new series of videos addresses how health care reform would safeguard Medicare

By: Seniors to Seniors | Source: AARP.org

In a new series of videos, older people and representatives from organizations that have represented seniors for decades talk about how health reform would safeguard Medicare.

Indeed, the changes Congress is considering would protect Medicare for today's seniors and for future generations, so all Americans can have the health coverage they need when they retire.

The videos include:

• Video One: Seniors to Seniors. Physicians, retirees, and leading health care advocates discuss how health reform will strengthen Medicare by addressing prescription drug coverage, out-of-pocket expenses, and long term care choices.
• Video Two: Health Reform Urgent. Retirees argue that health reform is beyond urgent. Maintaining the status quo means exorbitant costs for seniors and physician pay cuts that jeopardize seniors’ care.
• Video Three: Improve Medicare. A registered nurse, geriatrician, and others discuss how health reform will help seniors struggling with high costs of prescription drugs, improve the quality of care, emphasize prevention, and lower costs.
• Video Four: Improve Long-Term Care Choices. A retired teacher, family caregiver, and AARP's President discuss the need for better long-term care choices. Today, one year of care can cost as much as four years of college. 
• Video Five: Keep Your Doctor in Medicare. Physicians explain why Medicare, without health care reform, will require physicians to take considerable pay cuts, potentially forcing doctors to refuse Medicare patients or close their practices.
• Video Six: Keep Medicare Strong Now and for Future Generations. Organization leaders, including AARP’s President, explain how reform measures—such as increasing use of electronic medical records—will lower costs and preserve Medicare for the future.

The videos were created by Seniors to Seniors, a coalition of senior citizen organizations, including AARP, that has come together to educate seniors about what the current health care reform legislation means for them once it is implemented.

Protecting Medicare Is Top Priority

Medicare works for seniors, and AARP wants to keep it that way.

Current health care reform proposals will protect Medicare by tackling these issues:   

• Improving coverage with a package of improved services, such as coordinated care, safeguards against medical errors, and lower costs for preventive care   

• Lowering drug prices by closing the coverage gap, or "doughnut hole"  

• Ensuring seniors can see the doctor of their choice 

• Making long-term care more affordable and relieving family caregivers' burdens by providing new choices to get care at home and in the community   

• Providing protections to ensure that the spouses of patients who need Medicaid home-and community-based services for long-term care will not be forced to spend down into poverty

• Improving quality and coordination for the treatment and management of chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and high blood pressure

• Helping older Americans who are in greatest need to pay rapidly rising Medicare premiums and other health expenses

• Strengthening Medicare for the future by adding extra years to its solvency