MEDICARE ENROLLMENT W/DISABILITY UPDATE

 In NOV 08 over 75 health advocacy organizations launched the Coalition to End the Two-Year Wait for Medicare, sending a letter to health leaders in the House and Senate demanding that next year’s health reform efforts make a priority of covering people with disabilities who are struggling to survive as they wait for Medicare coverage.

Close to 1.5 million people are stuck in this waiting period annually. ”Nearly 40% of these individuals are without health insurance coverage at some point during their wait for Medicare; 24% have no health insurance during this entire period.

Many cannot afford to pay COBRA premiums to maintain coverage from their former employer, and private coverage on the individual market is unavailable or too expensive for this high-cost population. The economic downturn makes it difficult for states to extend Medicaid coverage beyond the most impoverished people with disabilities,” the coalition letter reads. “No one with disabilities severe enough to qualify for SSDI should be without health insurance.”

The coalition includes organizations such as the American Cancer Society – Cancer Action Network, Amputee Coalition of America, Alzheimer’s Association, Easter Seals and the Medicare Rights Center. In 1972, when Congress expanded Medicare to include people with disabilities, it created a “waiting period” that requires people to wait 24 months from when they begin receiving their Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) payments before they can receive health care through Medicare.

Costs for the elimination of the waiting period are estimated to be around $9 billion annually. These costs would be offset by about $4 billion in Medicaid savings. In the 110th congress Senate bill S.2102 sponsored by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), wioth 23 sponsor (including President-elect Barack Obama) and House bill H.R. 154 sponsored by Representative Gene Green (D-TX) with 103 cosponsors.

This legislation would eliminate the waiting period through a ten-year phase out.

 [Source:  Medicare Watch 25 Nov 08 ++]