Opinions Sought On Medicare Plans Clinton Seen As Key While Congress Debates $270 Billion Cutback Proposal

It’s not too late for Spokane residents to let President Clinton know they disagree with proposed Medicare cuts, the executive director of the 1995 White House Conference on Aging said Tuesday.

Even if Republicans manage to push through $270 billion in Medicare cuts, the president still has veto power, Bob Blancato told about 250 people at a Spokane aging conference.

“Advocacy may not impact Congress at all,” Blancato said. “It may be too late. (But) the president has the last word on this bill.”

Few people would say the Medicare system needs no reform, but advocates for the elderly should tell the president the proposed cuts are “too much, too fast, and it’s not necessary,” said Blancato.

Many Medicare defenders were slow in getting involved in the controversial debate on how to fix a federal health care program that’s going broke, Blancato said.

“One day you saw the locomotive and the next day you saw the caboose,” he said. “A lot of people jumped on this too late.”

Blancato was the luncheon speaker at a conference called “Quality of Life For Our Elders: A Journey to Positive Aging,” sponsored by Washington State University.

Other featured speakers at the two-day conference talked about storytelling as a catalyst for creative aging, spiritual awareness and the elderly, and working with cognitively impaired elders.

Gladys Considine, regional coordinator for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, arrived from Washington, D.C., to encourage the elderly and their relatives to become politically active.

“If it’s going to affect older people in the family, it’s going to affect the family,” Considine said.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Medicare cuts, many people had trouble believing such a threat was real, she said.

“They say, ‘Oh, they can’t do that!”’ said Considine. “But they can. That’s what’s sort of fearful.”

Added Blancato: “Their ultimate voice will be heard in 1996. If these cuts affect them, they return to the ballot box and make their feelings known that way.”

, DataTimes