Issue Position: Helping Seniors in the Ocean State

Issue Position

Issue Position: Helping Seniors in the Ocean State

Improving the lives of Rhode Island's seniors is one of my top priorities in Washington. I'm proud to serve as a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, a panel specifically tasked with exploring the wide range of issues that concern older Americans.

I hear countless stories from Rhode Islanders about their frustrations with our health care system, from staggering costs to inadequate access to high-quality care. I am passionate about reforming health care in America, particularly Medicare, by emphasizing prevention and improved quality of care, a stronger investment in our health information technology infrastructure, and changes in the payment structure. I am committed to ensuring that Medicare works not only for today's seniors, but for the millions of Americans who expect and deserve the program's benefits in the decades to come. I will not accept benefit cuts, increased cost-sharing, or reduced eligibility as solutions to the Medicare crisis.

I am committed to reforming the troubled Medicare Part D drug benefit, which leaves many Rhode Island seniors struggling to understand their benefits and responsibilities. The Bush administration's choice to privatize the prescription drug program rather than simply include it in the established Medicare benefit costs almost $5 billion a year. The combined cost of privatization and failure to negotiate prices directly with pharmaceutical companies is more than $30 billion a year. I am outraged by this wasteful spending, and I will continue to push for important reforms to this program, including empowering Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices, increased transparency in pricing, a government-sponsored alternative for seniors, and an elimination of the donut hole.

I also took a lead role in the Senate to ensure that seniors were among those to receive rebate checks in the 2008 economic stimulus bill. When the initial agreement between the Administration and the House of Representatives on an economic stimulus proposal was announced, I was concerned that many seniors - one of the groups that most needs our aid - would be excluded. Most seniors, who rely on Social Security benefits and savings and thus do not pay income taxes, would not be eligible for a tax rebate based on taxable income and delivered through the IRS. I urged Senate leaders to make seniors a priority in the stimulus plan, and the stimulus bill as enacted included this badly-needed aid for older Americans.

Finally, many Rhode Islanders have also shared with me their anxieties about retirement savings. I believe that our Social Security system can continue to serve as the bedrock of retirement security, and am working to ensure the solvency of the system through the peak Baby Boom retirement years and beyond. In high-cost areas like Rhode Island, however, Social Security simply doesn't provide enough to cover all of the costs of living for many retirees. I support incentives for retirement planning, such as tax-deferred savings to encourage people to start investing for their retirement when they are young. I will continue in my efforts to make sure that retirement is a time of enjoyment, not economic anxiety, for Rhode Islanders.

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