Save SeniorCare, Again!

The following is the latest newsletter from State Senator Kathleen Vinehout regarding Scott Walker's attack on the elderly:

"Please do what you can to keep SeniorCare as is. It is critical to those of us on it.” wrote a rural Buffalo County woman.

“I will be 70 years old in a couple of months and not on any prescription medicines. SeniorCare is perfect for me as I very seldom require a prescription for illness or injury, usually going for a year or more without needing one. I should not have to pay the outrageous high cost of Medicare Part D which I would very seldom use and it would cause a terrible financial burden for me that I could not handle on my fixed income.”

The rural woman I’ll call ‘Dawn’ signed her letter, “Thank you from a very satisfied SeniorCare participant.”

Slipped into the Governor’s state budget is a requirement that seniors sign up for Medicare Part D before they sign up for SeniorCare. The program is a substitute for Part D.

To justify his action, the Governor told the Wisconsin State Journal “It’s not about changing benefits; it’s ultimately about changing who pays for it.”

According to Dawn that is the problem.

She figures under the Governor’s new plan she’d pay $60 a month. Now she pays $30 a year. “I shouldn’t have to pay an outrageous bill for something I won’t use,” she said in a recent phone conversation.

SeniorCare is truly a Wisconsin invention. It is the only state-based alternative to the complicated maze of plans comprising Medicare Part D – the drug benefit for seniors.

To participate in SeniorCare, people must be Wisconsin residents, over age 65, and meet an income requirement. The program has a simple one-page enrollment form and requires a $30 annual fee. Folks pay a deductible and small co-payment of $15 for brand name and $5 for generic prescriptions.
Seniors love the program, as do health care workers, pharmacists, nursing homes and elder advocates. Not only is the program simple, it is also less expensive. In 2011, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) estimated that SeniorCare saves the federal government $85.8 million a year.

SeniorCare is a state-run program while Medicare Part D involves the sale of private insurance policies under federal government rules. Part D plans differ quite a bit with different formulas for coverage, different deductibles, different coinsurance and different lists of drugs covered. In addition, plans offer different levels of coverage in the “doughnut hole” — gap in coverage.

Part D plans require seniors to pay a monthly premium, in addition to the per-prescription copayment and the deductible. Seniors tell me the Part D premium alone could easily be 24 times the annual $30 cost of SeniorCare.

SeniorCare depends partly on federal Medicaid funds. To continue to get federal funds, Wisconsin must periodically prove to the feds through a waiver request that they are saving taxpayers’ money. Unlike Part D Medicare, one way that SeniorCare saves money is to negotiate with drug companies.
This is the second time the governor proposed doing away with SeniorCare as we know it. In 2011, a statewide petition drive saved the program.

Spearheading the petition drive was Representative Andy Jorgenson. He was recently quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "What is wrong with Governor Walker? Did he not get the message the first time, or doesn't he care? … Governor Walker is pushing a plan that will hurt seniors financially."
In 2011 people collected over 15,000 signatures. Moments after the signatures were delivered to lawmakers, Republicans pledged their support for SeniorCare.

Dawn knew about the success of the first petition drive and was already at work.

“I spent all day Saturday and Sunday sending emails,” she told me. “Most [lawmakers] sent a letter back saying they were not accepting emails. It was frustrating. Don’t you think if they represent Wisconsin they should accept my email?”

When I complemented Dawn on her persistence she said, “What scares me is that $60 a month,” she paused and nearly whispered, “I’m not going to be able to buy groceries.”

You can get a copy of the SeniorCare petition by calling my office toll free (877-763-6636) or sign the SeniorCare petition at my Senate website: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/vinehout/Pages/default.aspx

Scott Walker's Sneak Attack On Senior Citizens

In 2002, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle created Senior Care, a state run program that provides medication coverage for seniors. The program is very popular due to its user-friendly structure and much lower costs. Seniors enrolled in the program pay a $30 annual enrollment fee and a small copay for the medication - $5 for generics and $15 for brand name drugs. Better yet, Senior Care does not have the gap in coverage that most Medicare Part D plans do.

In 2011, Scott Walker tried to eliminate the program. This caused such an uproar among seniors that even Walker's Republican allies in the state legislature shot down Walker's plan to kill the program.

Last week, when Walker presented his budget, he made no mention of Senior Care, but lo and behold, he did include a massive cut to the program and wants to force seniors unto the more expensive programs offered by private insurance companies:

Democrats Wednesday blasted Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to push eligible recipients of the state's popular SeniorCare prescription drug plan into alternate federal coverage.

It wasn't immediately clear Wednesday how many of the 85,000 SeniorCare members across Wisconsin would have to start getting their prescriptions filled through the potentially more expensive federal Medicare Part D benefit.

[...]

The state would save $15 million from the change over the next two years, but the full impact of the cut would be nearly $100 million, since to provide its services SeniorCare also draws on drug company discounts and rebates — givebacks that they provide in the Medicare program — as well as fees and co-payments from patients.

While Walker is trying to spin it as no loss for Wisconsin seniors - he claims that it's just making the feds pay for it - the damage would be all too real for the elderly:

"They talk about going from steak to hamburger, but at this age most of us are already at hamburger and we're looking at going without," said 73-year-old Judith Joslin-Crary.

For Joslin-Crary and her husband Richard Crary, 86, of Beloit, losing funding from SeniorCare could mean making significant cuts or dialing back on doses of their prescriptions to manage.

One month's coverage through a private insurance company often costs more than the annual feel for Senior Care.

At least this shows that Walker isn't an ageist. He's willing to screw over anyone, no matter what stage of life they are in.