By Howard Greninger
TERRE HAUTE — Rising health care costs brought Frankie J. Agnew and her husband, Robert R. Agnew, to the Wabash Valley Senior Citizens Center on Thursday to learn about health care reform.
Both she and her husband have had open heart surgery within the past two years.
“I had open heart surgery last year and was in the hospital for four months,” Frankie Agnew, 72, said. “What we want from [insurance] reform is help.”
“I just want to learn more. I don’t want our health care to suffer,” she said.
Her husband, also 72, simply said, “Just get us something that costs less, that’s all I can say,” he added.
Fred Blade, 76, of Terre Haute said he would like to see lower cost insurance to help poor and lower-income people. Blade said he favors a “public option” on insurance.
“What it will amount to is government versus private insurance companies. I think that is the main fear of opponents of this. Insurance companies now keep jacking up the costs and this would make them play fair ball,” Blade said.
The three were among a small group of seniors who sought information from Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee.
Jim Wright, community organizer for Organizing for America, and Robert T. Bell, a volunteer/team leader, for Organizing for America led an informational forum at the senior center at 300 S. Fifth St.
Bell is a custodian at Terre Haute South Vigo High School. Bell said in 2000/2001 when working at Great Dane Trailers, his insurance premiums were $100 and then $200 a month. His insurance this year costs $775 a month under a Vigo County School Corp. plan that covers a maintenance employee and his entire family, a cost which he said caused him to drop his coverage.
“We could not pay bills and keep insurance,” Bell said. “Insurance reform is basically more choice. I am an American and I like choices,” he said.
Bell said health insurance reform, supported by President Barack Obama, will help seniors by reducing waste and ending overpayments to insurance companies. “It will eliminate the Medicare donut hole, the gap in prescription drug coverage” in Medicare Part D, Bell said. The drug industry has pledged to provide seniors with a discount of at least 50 percent for medications, saving thousands of dollars for some seniors, he said.
Other benefits include more affordable generic drugs, and beneficiaries will no longer have to share in the cost of prevention. “Health reform will simplify paperwork ... and decrease some co-payments for Medicare’s drug benefit,” Bell said.
Wright said a public option is still being discussed for insurance reform and is “sometimes being called Medicare Part E. The ‘E’ is for everyone.”
Wright urged senior citizens to contact federal legislators, particularly Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., who Wright said “are sitting on the fence” on how they will vote for insurance reform.
Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.
