Couple’s insurance shows need for reform

Do we need health insurance reform in some serious fashion? My wife and I have been retired for 18 years. Following is the effect our Part B Medicare Supplement plan and our Medicare Part D prescription drug plan will have on our discretionary spending.

Our premiums for Medicare Part B will not increase. However, the co-pay for services we customarily use will increase substantially. For example, office calls at our primary care provider will increase by 67 percent; co-pay to specialists such as cardiologists, optometrists, podiatrists, orthopedists, will increase 40 percent. Outpatient rehab therapy at hospitals will see a co-pay increase of 100 percent, and diagnostic lab work, X-rays, etc., will cost 133 percent more in 2010. The average of the services we use most often will see a co-pay increase of 62 percent.

Our Part D plan shows an increase of premiums of 50 percent. Considering the co-pay increases and using the same meds in 2010 as we are this year, our overall cost will increase by 55 percent, or $608.

I researched the federal publication “Medicare & You 2010,” the Iowa edition, and I am certain the plans in which we are enrolled are the most cost effective for us.

My point is that when Sen. Chuck Grassley states that if the health care revisions proposed in the Baucus bill that came out the committee he sits on will increase the cost of health care, what happens if we don't reform our health care system? Can we afford not to reform?

Al Seabrooke

Elgin