HEARING - U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

20
Therefore-I am supposed to take high blood pressure medicine
and a heart pill four times a day-I have not been able to buy
them. I broke a cartilage in my knee which the doctor says I am
going to have to have fixed, but there is no way I can do that,
either. My glasses were changed about 7 years ago, and my eye
doctor is worrying me about that, but I just do not go and get it
done.
I should be able to draw some Social Security myself. They let
me have $200. I get it about 4 or 5 months out of the year, and
then they cut it off. If they would take what my take-home pay is, I
do not make near enough, but they count what you get before your
taxes are taken out. So therefore, they cut my Social Security off.
Chairman MELCHER. How old are you?
Mrs. RIEGER. I will be 68 in May.
Chairman MELCHER. And your husband?
Mrs. RIEGER. My husband is 83.
Chairman MELCHER. He is 83. Where are you working?
Mrs. RIEGER. I am a cook at the VIP Supper Club in Alva, which
as I said, I am doing the hardest work I ever did in my life.
Chairman MELCHER. How many hours a week?
Mrs. RiEGER. Well, right now we are short of help, so I go to
work at 6:30 in the morning and get off at 3 p.m., 6 days a week.
Chairman MELCHER. Six-thirty to three?
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes.
Chairman MELCHER. What is your income per week, gross?
Mrs. RIEGER. It averages out to $600 a month.
Chairman MELCHER. One hundred fifty dollars a week, then?
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes.
Chairman MELCHER. And you are working 6 days a week.
Mrs. RIEGER. Six days a week right now. My boss does not like
for me to have to work over 5 days a week, but as I said, we are
short of help now, and until he can get something to work out, I
have to work 6 days a week.
Chairman MELCHER. And is your husband's Social Security $498
per month?
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes. And if it would come to where I would have to
quit, they tell me all I could draw would be half of his-and who
could live on that? You could not do it.
Chairman MELCHER. You are putting off your own health care
needs in order to work?
Mrs. RIEGER. I sure am, in order to work. My druggist got after
me the other day. I thought I owed them about $1,000, but my
drugstore bill right now that I have not been able to- pay is $1,300.
Chairman MELCHER. Now, are those drugs for yourself?
Mrs. RIEGER. For myself and my husband.
Chairman MELCHER. For both of you.
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes, because up until just recently, I had to pay all
of his drugstore bills. I had to buy all of his medicine. It has just
been in about the last 3 months that they have picked up any of
the prescription medicine for him.
Chairman MELCHER. That is while he is in the nursing home,
after he went to the nursing home?
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes.
Chairman MELCHER. They are still not picking it all up?