Currently 1 Response
- 1.
- Forget the new system, the current Medicare is a mess. As background, let me say that I have been working for 56 years, paid my taxes all that time and the new year will be my first on Medicare, if I even live that long.
Is there a doubt that I will live? Yes, there is. I am diabetic and I use insulin. The program that supplies the insulin to me will disqualify me when I turn 65 or become eligible for Medicare.
Once the various costs of Medicare are deducted from my Social Security I will have less than $600 a month left to pay my part of the health costs AND live on, obviously impossible.
Before this came up I was already $100 short of my budget every month. I thus am a great attendee of Church Suppers and the like.
What to do now that I will be several hundred short of budget? I have been trying to find out for six months. No one wants to tell you because it is bad news.
Maybe, maybe, I will get "Extra Help" from Social Security based on my income, but whoever figures out the "Extra Help" overstated my income by $3000 on the first determination and this had to be appealed. No word on that yet at the 11th hour.
Also, maybe, maybe, the state will pick up some of it as "Medicaid". Good luck on that though, last year my Medicaid share of cost deductible was $1200 *per*month*. I had to pay the first $1200 every month. The insulin doesn't cost *that* much! Might as well, though.
OK, we are a week away from the Medicare start date and it is all up in the air at this point. In a worse case scenario I won't have the money to buy food AND I won't have the money to pay my share to the health care either. Since Medicare requires the patient to pay before *they* pay anything I will be paying for Medicare and receiving no benefits from it. Isn't that cosy?
I checked on Food Stamps. The answer on that is a resounding "NO!" The Food Stamp Lady did suggest that I haunt the private food banks. She also said that she has been seeing this problem all the time for 20 years, and that all the lawmakers know about it.
Do they? Why did their representatives all play dumb when I called them?
- May
23 [New Scholars] New College
8:00 am - 4:00 pm - May
23 Ageless Grace with Mary Masi
10:00 am - 11:00 am - May
23 Fun Fitness for Parkinsons
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm - May
23 Simply Relax! with Kathi Sims
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
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Culinary roots
05/16/13
Trevor Kunk is the chef de cuisine at Blue Hill in New York City’s Greenwich Village, which the James Beard Foundation just named "most outstanding restaurant." -
Bright lights
05/16/13
Sarasota native and resident Bri Oliva made her TV debut May 7, on the "Rachael Ray Show." Oliva was selected to participate in a segment called "Hidden Dangers on the Playground." -
Key to the city
05/02/13
More than 100 community members and leaders, friends and family surprised Paul Thorpe, one of the founding members of the Downtown Association of Sarasota, April 25, at The Gator Club, to show their appreciation and celebrate the strides he’s made for Sarasota over the past four decades.
