California Senior Leaders Archives

The U.S. government thinks you’re doing okay if, in a family of four, you’re pulling in something over $22,000 a year. It might be a little tough to get by on that these days. But the way poverty is measured, and plans made around the measurements, are obtuse and arcane at best.

Exactly who qualifies for state and federal assistance varies. More important than today’s index though, unless you are someone missing out on help, is tomorrow: plans for adequate housing, food stamp and other assistance programs are all based on some very old data. When the current federal index was set, for example, some 3% of the family budget went for food; today’s actual food costs are more like 10%.

A group of California seniors converged on the state capitol a few days ago with an eye toward bringing that state’s poverty line and real-time poverty closer together. The group is enthusiastically supportive of a far more accurate index developed by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. They were careful to be “advocating and educating” only in meetings with legislators — the Senior Leaders Program is funded by the nonprofit California Wellness Foundation and lobbying is a no-no. But they would like to see AB 324, a bill crafted by Assembly Member Jim Beall, finally pass. Beall has watched it pass the Legislature twice, only to meet a Schwarzenegger veto; he told the seniors he thinks this time around the governor’s objections have been addressed.

This particular senior fails to see any reason to stick with inaccurate data when accurate data is available. The main argument against adopting a better measurement has centered around the cost issue — If we update the index, we might find more poor people. Hello? A town builds housing for 10 people and 100 people knock on the door?

Whether or not there are any incipient seniors in your family (we seem to make up a substantial percentage of the poor, by any measurement) you might want to see what’s going on in your state. Maybe, some day, the U.S. Government will even go for poverty line fact over fiction.

At an annual reunion gathering of California Senior Leaders today at the University of California, Berkeley, AARP California Executive Council member Bob Prath (himself a CA Senior Leader) made a valiant effort at outlining key segments of the proposed Health Reform bill which are of primary concern to over-50 generations.

Those segments include, in no specific order of significance or degree of complexity: guaranteed access to affordable coverage for Americans 50 to 64; closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap (known to insiders and more than a few others by now as the “doughnut hole”); approving generic versions of biologic drugs; preventing costly hospital readmissions by creating a follow-up care benefit in Medicare to help people transition to home; increasing funding for home-and-community-based services through Medicaid to help people stay in their homes and out of institutions; and improving programs that help low income Americans in Medicare afford needed drugs.

If that list of details seems daunting, it was not so to the Senior Leaders. Word had already circulated that Prath had read the entire 3,000+ pages of the bill, and no eye was going to glaze over. Covering it all, though, despite a carefully prepared power point presentation, was somewhat of a challenge in the after-lunch time whittled down to less than 30 minutes by the irrepressible tale-sharings of the reunion attendees.

Prath was asked, afterwards, for suggestions of where and how anyone over 50 might find concise and useful information, short of undertaking his own feat of studying 3000+ pages. Much, he says, can be learned through Health Action Now, and those worried about exorbitant drug bills can get some good, practical help from a nifty AARP brochure, “Don’t Dump Dollars into the Doughnut Hole.”

More enlightenment from the time-squeezed power point will appear in this space over the next few days.

Tag: California Senior Leaders

Who says you're poor?

Health Reform 101 for Seniors