Many aspects of the new Medicare Drug Plan are confusing, dangerous, and financially ruinous to elders and the disabled, particularly the poor. Various groups, including networks of the Gray Panthers, are agitating to fix them.

Nevertheless, members of the SF GP Health Committee feel that our emphasis should be on scrapping the entire Medicare Modernization Act, not just the Drug Plan. The MMA privatizes both drugs and health care, robs the poor and the sick of their healthcare, sets up Health Savings Accounts as a tax dodge for the rich, gives billions of dollars to drug companies and HMOs, and threatens the very existence of Medicare.

The MMA needs to be replaced with a plan that stops privatization, gives everyone healthcare and medicine, stops drug company and HMO price-gouging and guarantees Medicare’s future. That plan is comprehensive, universal, government-financed healthcare, with the same benefits and costs for everyone: “single payer.” The Committee is making plans to bring this message to specific locations in San Francisco.

The next generation will see 70 million more retirees with longer lives and chronic disease. But business and government want more money for oil wars, competing with China and Europe, re-tooling the military and corporate profits.

Already, huge cuts are being made to Medicare, Medicaid, retiree pensions and health plans, education, housing and nutrition. Age and youth will not go quietly into oblivion. The next meeting is Tuesday, January 10, 1:00 PM at the office.

(back to January 2006 Newsletter front page)