What to do with Grandma When Her Medicare Voucher Runs Out

If you're a Boomer, you've most likely paid into it your entire working life and are counting on it to supplement the dwindling value of your projected retirement income.

If you are a Senior, you've paid into it your entire working life and are counting on it to survive as you struggle to supplement the dwindling value of your current retirement income.

So what will happen to mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa if Congressman Paul Ryan's Medicare voucher system finds acceptance on the Senate floor? I cannot spell it out any better than something a Senior friend wrote the other day. It appears, with permission, below:

I've met the enemy, and he is Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. I take his plan to destroy Medicare personally because it could destroy me personally.

If Ryan gets his way, I'll never be able to have Medicare pay any more medical expenses for me. And I haven't even started toward the nursing home yet, let alone the hospice.

As I understand it, under the Ryan plan, each disabled or senior citizen would be given a voucher worth $15,000 for medical care throughout their senior years. When the voucher is used up, NO MORE MEDICAL HELP! That would account for about one sophisticated test.

I have an excellent example. I have had two heart attacks but my numbers have become extraordinary. My cholesterol total is 95. My blood pressure runs about 100 to 110 over 60, and my pulse rate at rest is in the upper 50s. For heart care, I go to the Cleveland Clinic, regarded as the premiere heart care center in the world.

In November, Dr. Donald Underwood, a teacher of cardiologists at the clinic, decided that it was time for me to have some tests. I had what is called a nuclear predisone test, an echogram, and other tests to check on my heart. By and large, it was in pretty good shape.

In December and January, neuromuscular specialists at the clinic diagnosed a damaged ulnar nerve in my left arm that was causing muscle deterioration in my left hand.

Ultimately, Michael Steinmetz, a neurosurgeon, performed surgery on the nerve that, to me, was miraculous. I had zero pain after the surgery. Immediately following the operation, I began having feeling again in my left little finger. Some muscle seems to be returning to other parts of the hand.

For the heart and nerve diagnoses and treatments, Medicare paid the Cleveland Clinic more than $34,000 in a four-month span — more than twice the $15,000 lifetime cap envisioned under the Ryan plan.

Anyone who argues this plan is not the destruction of Medicare is nuts. And anyone who favors the plan would turn all of our senior citizens and disabled people into walking corpses. Yet, this incredible insult and deceit toward the American people passed the U.S. House of Representatives with all but four Republicans voting for it.

So, do you need ask me how I will vote in the forthcoming election for Congress?

No sir, no one should need to ask how to vote in the forthcoming election. It should be a no-brainer. The rich don't want to pay taxes, and when you've used up your 60-hour-no-vacation-work-weeks capacity, they surely don't want to pay for your dotage.

That working Americans could allow themselves to be snookered into hiding under their beds in irrational terror of non-existent healthcare reform Death Panels yet run to the community well to lap up Death Vouchers for themselves is beyond all reason.

But I don't see a lot of reason, or humanity, in the Republican party or their Tea Party off-shoot, which is why my entire family has left it behind.