Legislative Update: Your Contact Helps Us Make the Case on Capitol Hill

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Legislative Update: Your Contact Helps Us Make the Case on Capitol Hill

By Patty Gaul, Director of Legislative Affairs, TREA Senior Citizens League

We recently finished compiling the results of our annual Advisor Senior Survey. We asked how you feel about the rising health care costs, your opinion of ways to restructure Social Security, a prescription drug program, and other issues. This helps us understand which legislative issues are most important to you. Because you take the time to let us know what is going on in your life, we are better able to create a legislative program based on your input. Our members are the greatest resource we have at TSCL!

When we meet with Members of Congress and their staffs, we often relay just how our members stand on an issue. We also hear frequently from Members of Congress and their staffs about the contact many of you have made with them.

When your TSCL Board of Trustees and staff were on the Hill recently, we were asked how certain issues—such as the low COLA—affected our membership. We are able to cite data from the survey, as well as to mention your e-mails and letters that we receive from you. As the Board is also made up almost entirely of retired individuals, they too are able to speak firsthand to the question of how the low COLA affects them. Specifically, our Board members discussed the rising Medicare part B premiums, and how the small COLAs just aren’t keeping up with the premium increases.

When we talk about the prescription drug issue with Members of Congress and their staffs, we highlight the fact that nearly one-third of our membership does not have prescription drug insurance. You pay anywhere from 30 to 300 percent more for medicines than seniors in Canada and Europe, because our government hasn’t allowed safe, affordable drugs to be imported into the United States!

Please, keep letting us know what legislative issues are affecting your quality of life. It is through your personal anecdotes that we can show Members of Congress how the legislation they pass—or don’t pass—affects their constituents each and every day!

November 2003