Attendees; RMAC

John R Kotson—IBM Retiree; RMAC Chairman

Hazel Floyd—AUSWR CO/WY President; RMAC Member

Barbara Wilcox—AUSWR Health Care Specialist; RMAC Member

John Romelfanger—AUSWR CO/WY VP Membership; RMAC Member

Joe Halpern—AUSWR Member; RMAC Member

Guests

Betty Sweeney—Community Liaison Staffer for Senator Michael Bennet

Ken Bennett—District Director for Congresswoman Betsy Markey

Stuart Feinhor—SAGE Council Director for Congressman Jared Polis

National

Stuart Feinhor—Congressman Polis is frustrated with the Senate leaving bills on the table. House passes legislation and it is blocked in the Senate. He is looking to get back into the immigration debate and working on education initiatives.

On health care reform, he believes Medicare Advantage premiums will be going down and the Medicare D doughnut hole will be closing. The American Medical Association is a big problem; they have few members but control coding on health care procedures and the number of doctors being trained.

Congressman Polis usually attends the SAGE Council meetings when in town and listens attentively. He is aware of the Medicare catastrophic coverage problem and Social Security

issues. The SAGE Council conducted a job hunters “boot camp” recently. They distributed AARP materials on how to job hunt if over 50. A person’s qualifications must be matched to job descriptions.

A Bio-tech roundtable is big in Polis’ district. It is aimed at how to attract bio-tech companies and retain them.

Polis believes that campaign financing is a major issue. He has a lot of concern over Colorado state propositions to greatly reduce funding of government.

Ken Bennett—Congresswoman Markey is concerned with 3 big issues;

1. Economy/jobs—trying anything she can to get the economy going. She is working with lenders/bankers to get money flowing to small businesses. This involves working both on the ground and on the legislative side. Major issues involve paperwork and fees to get the money flowing. She is particularly concerned with the older unemployed workers.
2. Veterans—Markey is supporting veteran’s bills. Each war has it’s own medical issues and alternative treatments. She is holding veteran’s forums; many veterans are not aware of the services that are available.
3. Health Care—Markey voted against the first health care bill because it didn’t do enough to control costs and help small businesses to provide health care to their employees. She is strong on Medicare; a lot of emphasis on eliminating fraud e. g., the use of e-records to help catch fraud. She believes Medicare should have the ability to negotiate drug prices with the drug companies and we need to eliminate the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies. Betsy is concerned that people are going abroad for medical treatments because it’s cheaper; she wants to find out why.
4. Medicare payments favor hospitals over surgical centers. The health care bill widened the gap even though surgical centers are more efficient and effective.
5. One of our clinics is a good example of how health care can be delivered more effectively.

Ken works on individual cases, helps people get benefits. There are 6 case workers that brought $2 million to individuals, mostly seniors. Some senior centers don’t want congressional staff members there because they don’t want to get involved in politics. There is a new wave of home foreclosures that are hitting seniors hard. Some members of Congress are still talking about privatizing Social Security; Betsy has taken a strong stand against it.

Betty Sweeney—Bennet has always supported getting rid of the Sustainable Rate Growth (SRG) formula for Medicare Payments. He wants to at least maintain the current payment rate and eventually increase it. Betty will try to find out what would replace the SRG. On Medicare catastrophic coverage, because of the budget barely sustaining, it won’t happen soon. Senator Bennet agrees with bulk buying and re-importation of drugs, but does not have a position on Medicare D. Other unfinished business will take precedent during the “lame duck” session of Congress.

Betty has toured the state, the two top issues for seniors were the SRG (heard from their doctors) and “don’t take away my silver slippers”. A third issue, some are over-insured with Medicare, Tri-care and PERA (state employee’s health insurance), so they didn’t care what was happening with health care reform. Tri-care pays last and picks up what is left of the bill. It’s the provider’s administrator that has to deal with the multiple insurances.

Barbara Wilcox made a request for information on how the new insurance law applies to company-supplied Medicare supplemental insurance. All 3 staffers agreed to research the question. Barbara also reported that NRLN (National Retiree Legislative Network) asked her permission to use her columns on health care reform that she writes for the AUSWR newsletter, the Retiree Guardian. NRLN mailed the columns to their grassroots members and many compliments were received.

A candidate questionnaire encompassing the 3 most significant items of the RMAC agenda was given to all three staffers, who said they would give it to their campaign staffs. Questionnaires will also be delivered to other Colorado candidates by RMAC members.

Colorado

Congresswoman DeGette—Barbara Wilcox distributed a report on her meeting with Andrea Autobee, DeGette’s Denver staff member. Barbara exchanged follow up emails with Andrea trying to get answers to our questions with very limited success. She will try emailing the health care specialist on DeGette’s staff in Washington directly.

Congressman Perlmutter—Still no response to the five action items that Jerry Pifer committed to research. Pat Finley has the action to follow up with Jerry.

John Kotson authored a letter to that was sent to each of the Colorado representatives requesting support for Medicare catastrophic coverage, Medicare negotiated drugs, and the SRG formula. No response has been received thus far. Each RMAC member has the action to continue pressuring the Representatives for an answer.

Other

Mike Kotson will transfer ownership of the RMAC website to Pat Finley. In the future, the yearly fee for the website will be shared by RMAC members.

John will write an email for Barbara to send to Irene Aguilar to see if HCAC might send a representative to RMAC meetings.

The next RMAC meeting will be held on December 3^rd.