Dear Editor,
I thank Mike Fisher, of the Office of the Health Care Advocate, for his commentary, “Thank you legislators for listening to Vermonters’ voices and improving Medicare affordability.” This is about extending the eligibility requirements for Vermont’s Medicare Savings Program (MSP), an expansion that will ease the financial hardships suffered by so many low-income Vermonters on Medicare facing what Fisher called the “Medicare cliff.”
“Until this year,” Fisher wrote, “many policy makers were unaware of the ‘Medicare cliff’ — the precipitous drop in financial support and access to care for people on Medicare…”
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I am one of those on that “Medicare cliff.” I am there because of the “eligibility” requirements of the MSP. I was eligible for Medicaid before I turned 65 and transitioned to Medicare and then was deemed “ineligible” for the MSP because my social security was over the MSP “limits.”
These Income eligibility limits are another of the profound injustices of American health care. They exist to force us onto private insurance. They did that to me. I now have to pay a private insurer some $200 a month for the Medicare supplement (another of those American health care injustices) in addition to the $174 a month extracted from my social security for Medicare Part B. These are over some $4,000 a year in added costs before the deductibles. I am also still paying the federal and state taxes for what I am deemed ineligible for.
So I join Mike Fisher in thanking the Legislature, especially the House Health Committee, as well as the other committees who worked so hard to pass this bill on our behalf. I also thank the Office of the Health Care Advocate for their tireless efforts on this issue.
Fisher was right that “this is a phenomenal victory for Vermonters who are enrolled in Medicare.” It is also a win in another way. For once, even in yet another of those so-called tight budget years, Vermont sided with humanity over costs.
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier
Read the story on VTDigger here: Walter Carpenter: I join Mike Fisher in thanking the Legislature for Medicare expansion.