Medicare not adequate to cover cost

The house on the lake in Grant Township was everything to Corinne and her family. But when her husband almost burned it down, she knew she needed to get help. Her husband, Richard, a retired 3M employee, was in his 80s by then and senile dementia often caused him to get violent. It was time to place him in a nursing home.

Now in her 70s, it quickly began to dawn on Corinne that she was “no longer in charge of myself or my finances.” Even after selling the lake place they loved, she still needed to spend down their retirement income to ensure that her husband was eligible for Medical Assistance to supplement the medical costs that weren’t covered by Medicare.

“The specter of myself as a bag lady haunted me,” she said. “You spend your whole life thinking you will be able to leave something to your kids.”

Every few days she visited him at the nursing home and wrote a weekly column for her local newspaper to keep her sanity. In a column titled, This is not a bill, Corinne wrote, “with a husband on Medical Assistance, life is composed of government paper trails and requests for information.”

The paper chase wasn’t the worst of it, though. Medical Assistance patients have a tougher time getting in to see providers because the reimbursement often doesn’t cover the cost of care. Her husband experienced swelling and fever that proved to be an abscessed tooth. The situation required an exhausting search for a local dentist who would accept an MA patient. The closest dentist who would take him was in Saint Paul. “Though MA paid for extraction costs and transportation to and from the dentist, it could have been done cheaper locally” she said “if providers were adequately compensated.”

Her husband died in 2007, but Corinne has no illusions that her health care future will be any easier if things stay the same. She said she is angry and frustrated about the cost and complexity of the system. “I only get half the pension now, but my insurance costs have doubled to nearly 15 percent of my monthly income. I am also astounded by the cost of all the paperwork and the printing and mailing of the 4 or 5 booklets I get explaining the benefits of various plans. All that cost is passed on to taxpayers.”

“It should be a simple system. People should be able to still work and get help with their medical bills.” Corinne is currently working with the Make Health Happen campaign, organizing her neighbors to advocate for affordable health care for all Minnesotans.