HEARING - U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

23
Senator HEINZ. So you are not taking your medication?
Mrs. RIEGER. No. The druggist says, "Well, you can charge it."
I said, "Yes, but you are charging me interest on that every
month, and the interest amounts to more than sometimes what I
can pay on the bill."
Senator HEINZ. So that's the reason you are not taking your
medication?
Mrs. RIEGER. Because I do not have the money, and I just do not
feel I can afford to charge, because I do not want to run up any
more bills.
Senator HEINZ. So you are putting off a lot of needed medical
care because you cannot afford it.
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes.
Senator HEINZ. Do you know of any other people who are doing
the same?
Mrs. RIEGER. Yes, I do. I could have brought a lot of names along
with me of people who are in the same boat I am.
Senator HEINZ. What should all of us here in Congress or for
that matter, in the administration, learn from this, and in your
opinion as you look not just at yourself but these other people,
what is the solution? Should individuals be doing more for themselves?
Should families be doing more? Should employers be doing
more or should the Government be doing more? Where does the responsibility
lie, and who should accept that responsibility?
Mrs. RIEGER. I really do not know what to say. I mean, I do not
know on that. The thing about it that disturbs me is that my husband
had had this Medicare supplement. He worked at the college
for 17 years. He had this insurance then, which the college covered;
then, when he left the college, he could put it into a Medicare supplement.
Well, it kept going up; each month, it would raise. When
it got up to $60, I could not pay it so I had to drop it.
Senator HEINZ. So you dropped that. When did you drop that?
Mrs. RIEGER. About a year ago.
Senator HEINZ. Was that before or after you started getting these
additional bills?
Mrs. RIEGER. Oh, well, I had bills then, yes.
Senator HEINZ. And some of them were being paid by the supplement?
Mrs. RIEGER. Well, if he went to the hospital, yes. Now, the nursing
home he is in has several registered nurses. It is a family-run
nursing home, and we are very fortunate to have such a good nursing
home in Alva. I said to my doctor, "I do not know what I would
do if he would have to go to the hospital."
He said, "Well, it is going to have to be something drastic-very
bad-if I send him to the hospital, because he will get better care
right here than at the hospital, and they can handle almost everything."
Senator HEINZ. One last question, because I know Senator Pressler
and others have questions. Hypothetically, if either the private
insurance industry or the government designed a true catastrophic
and long-term illness policy that really did the job, that did not inflict
on you or on Mrs. Yelineck the kinds of sacrifices that you
have described, and let us say-and I am pulling a number right
out of the air-but let us say it costs a fair amount of money a