I opened the rather official looking envelope last Monday with a bit of caution. Anytime I receive an envelope from a branch of the federal government it is always accompanied by a sense of anxiety. Carefully, I opened it up and there it was staring back at me, mocking me, gloating at me. It was my brand new Medicare card.
When I turned 50 years old, I was away at a seminary taking a couple of doctoral courses. As one of the older people in the class, I felt old, out of place in this institution where, for the most part, younger people were preparing for the ministry. I even got a bit depressed thinking that I was just getting too old to invest this kind of time, energy, stress, and money at this late stage of my life.
Then, I returned home and waiting for me in the accumulated mail was an invitation to join the American Association of Retired People. Actually, the organization doesn’t go by that moniker anymore. Today, it is simply known as AARP.
It used to be that membership in AARP was the first official sign of getting older. Not so much anymore. Now AARP markets itself to a younger generation. People who are 50 don’t see themselves as old and many can run laps around younger people. But a Medicare card is something altogether different. It is a sign that the government is now taking care of you — to some extent at least.
Medicare began in 1965 under the administration of Lyndon Johnson. Back then, patients over 65 paid three times what younger people paid in insurance premiums. Fully 35 percent of seniors had no insurance coverage at all.
Medicare, by the way, spurred the racial integration of thousands of waiting rooms, hospital floors, and physician practices by making payments to healthcare providers conditional on desegregation.
Most of the people I know who have Medicare are grateful for it. One man, who headed up an insurance agency, touts it as the best health insurance he’s ever had. Medicare has evolved over the years.
One report states, “Since 1965, the provisions of Medicare have expanded to include benefits for speech, physical, and chiropractic therapy in 1972. Medicare added the option of payments to health maintenance organizations in the 1980s. Over the years, Congress expanded Medicare eligibility to younger people who have permanent disabilities and receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) payments and those who have end-stage renal disease (ESRD).
“The association with HMOs, begun in the 1980s, was formalized under President Clinton in 1997. In 2003, under President George W. Bush, a Medicare program for covering almost all drugs was passed (and went into effect in 2006).
“Since the creation of Medicare, science and medicine have advanced, and life expectancy has increased as well. The fact that people are living longer necessitates more services for later stages in life. Thus in 1982, the government added hospice benefits to aid the elderly on a temporary basis (Medicare.gov, 2012). Two years later in 1984, hospice became a permanent benefit. Congress further expanded Medicare in 2001 to cover younger people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease).”
So, I suppose that getting a Medicare card is, in reality, a good thing. At least I have lived long enough to obtain one, although my benefits do not begin for another three months. In that time I have to figure out what all the supplemental coverage means and costs. My mailbox is bulging with advertisements that are, presumably, to help me in this matter.
In the meantime, I’ll tuck my Medicare card into my wallet, next to my AARP card, and go for a ride on my Harley-Davidson. I may be getting older but, for now at least, I refuse to get old.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
