“City offers new health benefit for senior citizens - Miami Herald” plus 1 more |
| City offers new health benefit for senior citizens - Miami Herald Posted: 18 Oct 2010 08:09 PM PDT The city of Miami Gardens and a health benefit company have joined forces to provide a way some senior citizens can access city recreational programs for free. Healthways Silver Sneakers, a fitness program designed for seniors 65 and older, will soon be available at the Betty T. Ferguson Recreational Center, 3000 NW 199th St. To participate in Silver Sneakers, it must be included in the person's insurance plan. Silver Sneakers is included in health plans offered by Humana, AvMed and other firms. Councilman André Williams says through the program, seniors will receive a free gym membership at the rec center. But if they want to receive the Gold Package, which includes weekly brunches, standard and deluxe trips, and full use of the center, seniors will have to either use the gym a minimum of eight times per month or pay a fee. ``Seniors will not automatically qualify for the gold package by joining Silver Sneakers,'' Williams said, ``but the most important thing is being healthy and pursuing a healthy lifestyle.'' This comes after seniors spoke out about the confusing packages offered at the center last month. Before Silver Sneakers, the council offered seniors three packages, which will remain available for seniors whose insurance company doesn't cover Silver Sneakers or who don't make the minimum number of gym visits. The three packages are: the $25 gold package for weekly brunches, four trips a month, workshops and full access to the center; the $15 silver package for weekly brunch, two trips and workshops; the $5 bronze package includes weekly brunch and workshops. Rita Pierre of the Cloverleaf Royals, a senior citizen's group, said her club will not participate in the council's new initiative. Instead her group chose to continue conducting their activities at their current location, Cloverleaf Park. Like all senior groups who choose to be independent and go to parks throughout the city, Cloverleaf will pay a monthly fee of $65. ``It's just a lot of different changes, they said one thing in the beginning and now they're changing it again,'' said Pierre, 67. ``We need a council person to discuss it with us one-on-one. Council meetings are crowded; we're seniors, they say some things that we may not even hear.'' Sporty Young, president of Crestview and Rolling Oaks Ambassadors, said he is pleased with the new changes and does not mind frequently using the gym to qualify for the Gold Package. But he worries about his members who do not qualify for Silver Sneakers because of the age minimum. ``Not everyone in my group is 65 yet,'' said Young, 73, ``but we will remain a group and go to the center as individuals to exercise our rights as senior citizens.'' Silver Sneakers Field Manager Dianna Valenzuela met with the council and local residents at last week's council meeting to inform the public about the benefits of the nationwide program. ``The goal of this program is to encourage you to become active,'' said Valenzuela. ``The beauty of this program is that it's not only for people who are active, but even for people in wheelchairs. It's tailored for anyone.'' Williams said the program will have no fiscal impact on the city because the money will come from insurance companies not from senior citizens. ``There are 2000 eligible seniors within a 2-mile radius of the Betty T. Ferguson Center,'' said Williams. ``This is a revenue generator because no matter where you live you can participate, and the center will receive the fees.'' Mayor Shirley Gibson said she encourages senior citizens to use the brand-new facility as the council works to make changes to accommodate the elderly. ``We have such a fine facility. We want people to use the gym and the pool. It's not just a meeting place. We don't want the building sitting there and you don't use it.'' This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Nixing — or 'fixing' — health law? Don't hold your breath - msnbc.com Posted: 18 Oct 2010 01:21 PM PDT WASHINGTON — When West Virginia Senate candidate John Raese delivered a thundering promise to support a "termination and repeal of Obamacare" at a recent campaign event, the crowd went wild. "Boy, do I know the applause lines!" exclaimed the Republican hopeful. Raese's Democratic opponent, Gov. Joe Manchin, isn't all that different from his rival when it comes to the sprawling health care overhaul signed into law by the president earlier this year. Calling parts of the bill "overreaching," Manchin has said that some parts of the legislation need to be nixed. "If you can't fix it, repeal the whole thing," he told FOX News last week. Repealing — or at least "fixing" — the legislation may be a popular campaign proposal out on the stump. But both political and structural realities of the complex reform passed by Congress earlier this year make a wholesale cancellation of the bill almost impossible. And most of the unpopular parts of the plan, at least for the moment, are here to stay. Legislative hurdles Problems with the implementation of the bill have also made headlines. In recent months, the Obama administration had to issue dozens of one-year waivers to insurers and other corporations who resisted new rules capping coverage for certain health care plans. As insurers anticipate the coming changes, many have raised their premiums. But — popular or not — killing the bill is hardly a possibility as long as there's a Democrat in the White House. Even if Republicans win majorities in the House and Senate, President Barack Obama will retain the power to veto any legislation that crosses his desk, a power he'd certainly exercise if lawmakers tried to substantially modify or revoke the defining legislative victory of his first 18 months in office. If — as most political observers are now predicting — Republicans win a majority in the House, leaders are likely to introduce legislation early next year that would repeal the existing bill and instead propose a GOP-authored replacement that would allow insurance plans to be sold across state lines, a measure that Republicans say would drive down costs because of increased competition. But even if that measure passed the House, any controversial changes to the bill would face extremely poor prospects of passage in what's almost certain to be a closely divide Senate. Julie Barnes, the director of health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, says that efforts to change the new system also fail to take into account how much has already been done. Although the bill is still in the early stages of implementation, says Barnes, state and local governments have already begun to receive federal grant money to establish new protocols — efforts that they aren't eager to see go to waste. "Those are bells that are not going to be unrung," she said. More likely, she said, would be congressional elimination of funding for particular programs. House Republicans are considering using the budget process to starve the Internal Revenue Service or the Department of Health and Human Service of money to administer the plan or enforce tax penalties for those who violate it. House Speaker John Boehner promised to do just that in a recent interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer. "They'll get not one dime from us," he said. "Not a dime. There is no fixing this." "That's really the only thing that is politically possible but in [Congress's] realm of responsibility," says Barnes, "Everything else has already been accomplished."
What about 'fixing' the bill? In a recent debate, Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway called his proposal to "fix" health care "a stark difference" from his Republican rival's pledge to repeal the bill. Illinois Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, who is locked in one of the country's tightest Senate races, uses a similar line on the stump, calling the bill "far from a perfect vehicle" and saying of his GOP opponent Mark Kirk, "He wants to repeal it. I want to reform it." Some "fixes" could receive bipartisan support. Republicans are likely to target one particularly unpopular IRS reporting requirement that could add a hefty paperwork burden to many companies. But health policy experts and congressional aides on both sides of the aisle agree that the core pieces of the bill are so intertwined that it would be almost impossible to remove its most unpopular parts without collapsing the system on which the legislation is premised. The "individual mandate" — the requirement that almost all Americans purchase insurance or else pay a fine — has been particularly reviled by opponents of the reform bill passed this year. Many Republicans argue that the mandate is unconstitutional, a question currently being explored in the courts.
"America is a country of choices, not forcing people to buy things that they don't need," said Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle in a debate against Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday. But the mandate, which serves to spread risk throughout large pools of healthy people unlikely to require costly treatments, is a central portion of the bill that lawmakers negotiated with insurers. "The object of the law is to prevent acute conditions from happening at the first place," said Barnes. "The only way to do that is to mandate. Our only hope is to spread risk around so that we can make premiums more affordable." Some backers of the legislation argue that, as more components of the health care plan become operational, costs to the consumer will be reduced and enthusiasm for "repeal" will fade. The most popular provisions — like subsidies to those who cannot afford insurance, small business programs intended to reduce premium costs, and a total ban on insurance companies denying coverage to adults with preexisting conditions — will be in place by 2014. But opponents of the plan aren't buying it, saying that the Democratic administration has now become the face of a massive system fraught with inefficiencies. "They've just grabbed ownership of every problem in the health care system," said one House GOP aide. "Every time you wait an extra hour in a doctor's waiting room, it's going to feel like Barack Obama's fault." © 2010 msnbc.com Reprints This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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