Lamorte: Medicare is a bipartisan success, so why is it under attack?
Today marks the 58th anniversary of the creation of Medicare.
Prior to the introduction of Medicare, the United States had a senior healthcare crisis. Nearly half of older Americans lacked healthcare coverage when they needed it the most.
It took the United States 30 years – from President Harry Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson – to develop a program to solve this problem. In the 50 plus years that followed, Medicare revolutionized healthcare for America’s seniors. It cut the number of uninsured older Americans to near zero. It lowered costs, improved the quality of care, and increased life expectancy.
Medicare wasn’t, and isn’t, perfect. Its journey includes reforms made under Democratic and Republican presidents, President Bush, President Obama – and President Biden just last year – to continue to strengthen coverage and lower costs.
As a result, Medicare is a resounding, bipartisan success with an estimated 13% of Puebloans enrolled into Medicare today. So why is it under attack in Washington?
To answer that question, we can look to the example set by Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District that includes Pueblo. Last year, Boebert supported the Republican Study Committee’s budget to gut Medicare. It may have boosted her political celebrity with the far-right and generated headlines but did nothing to make headway on the critical need to lower healthcare costs for Coloradans in her district.
As an organization that advocates for older Coloradans, we are calling on Boebert to listen to her constituents in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District – the Colorado district with the highest number of seniors in the state.
The plan Boebert supports to gut Medicare is a disaster. It creates more bureaucracy by turning Medicare into a means-tested voucher program, which would make it harder for seniors to access their benefits. The plan also increases the age of eligibility for Medicare, which would put healthcare coverage out of reach for millions of seniors.
To make matters worse, Boebert is dishonest about her record. She tried to hide her support for this proposal by stripping any mention of it from her website. She also tried to silence her critics by threatening to sue an organization that launched an advocacy campaign to hold her accountable.
Boebert’s harmful record on Medicare doesn’t stop there. She also voted against lowering the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare through the Inflation Reduction Act. Boebert falsely claimed this legislation would raise costs. In reality, Coloradans are already seeing lower out-of-pocket costs on dozens of drugs.
Boebert’s position was aligned with the biggest drug companies who are now fighting tooth and nail to eliminate this new power for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices so they are free to raise prices and pass on the cost to Colorado seniors.
The last, and most outrageous, example is Boebert’s effort this spring to push the United States towards the first ever default on the national debt, and use the threat of economic crisis as a bargaining chip to force harmful cuts to Medicare and other critical programs.
The Grand Junction Sentinel called out Boebert’s actions for what they were, lamenting that “Boebert never misses an opportunity for gamesmanship and political posturing. They have their place in politics, but not when the stakes are this high. Sticking to her guns on this issue will harm Americans. It will hurt everyone.”
The harm that the Default on America plan Boebert voted for would have caused is clear: 1 million Colorado seniors and people with disabilities would endure longer wait times when seeking assistance for Social Security and Medicare; 641,000 Coloradans would have been put at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage; and 111,300 Colorado veterans could have lost access to outpatient visits, leaving them unable to get appointments for care like mental health services and substance disorder treatment.
Maybe Coloradans should have seen this coming. But we didn't want to believe Lauren Boebert when she said, “We’re here to tell the government, we don’t want your benefits, we don’t want your welfare.” Well, we are here to tell Representative Boebert that she doesn’t speak for the nearly 1 million Coloradans of retirement age who worked hard to retire confidently.
Now that her record is clear, we can see that as a member of Congress, Lauren Boebert has frittered away her responsibility to protect the healthcare and retirement security that older Coloradans have worked for, earned, and deserve, in exchange for personal political gain.
On the 58th anniversary of Medicare, we call on Lauren Boebert to do better for Colorado seniors.
Justin Lamorte is the executive director of Rocky Mountain Values
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Lamorte: Medicare is a bipartisan success, so why is it under attack?
