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Join the Texas Medicare Manifesto campaign. Write a letter to the editor and send it to your local paper. The more letters a paper receives, the more likely it is to cover the story in depth. Use the sample letter below as a guide.
Sample Letter to the Editor
To make your letter more compelling please add a personal story
Congress once again did not make health care a priority for senior citizens. Instead, Congress put health insurance company profits before reliable health care for seniors. As a doctor who specializes in [ ], I find this decision appalling.
How did Congress fail seniors? Right before Christmas, Congress chose not to fix Medicare’s flawed payment system. Medicare’s current funding scheme ensures that hospitals, nursing homes, and Medicare HMOs make more money each year. Medicare Advantage insurance and HMO plans receive a 12-percent bonus. That adds up to billions of dollars — a double-digit bonus — for doing nothing more than brokering medical services covered through regular Medicare.
Meanwhile, doctors — the frontline people who take care of Medicare patients — had to fight to avoid dramatic pay cuts. Doctors faced a 10-percent cut in January. Over the next decade, the cut could be as deep as 40 percent. Congress did not fix it. Instead, they put a tiny Band-Aid on this gaping wound and delayed the 10-percent cut until June.
What does that mean for Medicare patients? You may not be able to see the doctor of your choice, nor receive quality health care. Congress would rather help health insurance companies increase their profits than ensure senior citizens get the care they deserve.
It is time that doctors and our patients unite. We must work together and hold Congress accountable for not fixing the flawed Medicare system. We need to stop Congress from robbing seniors and feeding the health insurance pork belly. Please join your doctor today. Call our senators and representatives and demand they take these actions:
- Fix the BROKEN Medicare funding formula;
- Develop a new payment system that pays doctors fairly, and ensure seniors get affordable, convenient, and high quality care (at their convenience); and
- Put Medicare patients’ health care needs before health insurance profits.
Sincerely,
Name, MD, specialty
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Last Published: 1/30/2008 Print this page
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