AFSCME Retirees Fighting for Health Reform
November 12, 2009
Now that health care reform has passed in the House, it faces a tough challenge in the Senate as opponents of reform try anything to stop it, including scaring seniors with myths and misinformation.
AFSCME Retirees – the union’s organization of nearly a quarter million retired members – has been working hard to dispel these false claims about “death panels,” rationed care, and cuts in Medicare benefits.
The truth is there are no benefit cuts and no rationing of care in these bills, and there certainly are no "death panels" that would deny care to seniors. In fact, reform will strengthen Medicare’s solvency and add new benefits that seniors want and need. These include:
- phasing out Medicare’s big gap in drug coverage (the infamous “doughnut hole”)
- fixing the physician fee schedule, so doctors will always accept Medicare patients
- offering free Medicare preventive services – such as cancer screenings
- and providing more choices in long term care.
AFSCME is trying to promote this message to retiree members as well as to the parents and grandparents of AFSCME’s working members. The Retirees section of AFSCME.org includes health care fact sheets and a new video called “Phony Horror Stories about Health Care Reform.”
The video, which stars AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee and Barbara Easterling, Pres. of the Alliance for Retired Americans, separates fact from fiction for senior citizens. It also features video remarks from Lynda Johnson Robb, whose father – LBJ – established Medicare as the first step toward affordable health care coverage for all. Watch it here:
In addition, Seniors to Seniors, a coalition that includes AFSCME Retirees, AARP, the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, is fighting to dispel myths about reform. The coalition site at www.seniorstoseniors.org has informative videos that show fellow seniors telling their personal health care stories and a health care reform Q & A.
