Prescription discount card is invaluable

8/5/2004

The Blade did a disservice to its older readers when it maintained in a July 27 editorial that the Medicare-approved prescription drug discount cards do not save seniors any money. These cards are especially valuable to the limited-income seniors who qualify for the Transitional Assistance Program, which provides a $600 per year credit to buy prescription drugs. An estimated 183,000 Ohioans qualify for this $600 credit.

AARP Ohio is working with the Ohio Senior Health Insurance Information Program (OSHIIP) to recruit and train volunteers willing to sit down with Medicare beneficiaries and help them get the information they need to decide which card best meets their needs. These volunteers also are helping Medicare beneficiaries complete paperwork to apply for the $600 credit and enroll for a discount drug card.

Yes, the process can be confusing. That is why AARP Ohio, OSHIIP, and a host of other organizations have joined the Access to Benefits Coalition to help Medicare beneficiaries get the $600 annual credit. Anyone who needs assistance can get it by calling OSHIIP at 1-800-686-1578.

From the start, AARP promised to keep working to improve Medicare prescription drug coverage. We are keeping that promise. The findings of the AARP Rx Watchdog Report, which The Blade cited, is one of the ways we continue to put pressure on pharmaceutical manufacturers to make prescription drugs more affordable. AARP also is supporting the bipartisan Dorgan-Snowe bill to allow Americans to safely and legally import prescription drugs, beginning with Canada.

Spreading misinformation about the Medicare-approved prescription drug discount cards harms those who need the most help. We hope The Blade will try to connect readers with the assistance that can help them afford their prescription medications. For our part, AARP will continue to use our power to make it better.

Kathy Tefft-Keller

State Director

AARP Ohio

Columbus

Reading your recent story about how Ohio Secretary Of State Ken Blackwell decided to deal with the Lucas County Board of Elections nearly brought my blood to boil. I was simply shocked that public reprimands were the brunt of the punishment.

The four village idiots at the election board should accept the obvious fact that they screwed up royally. As a voting, taxpaying resident of Lucas County, I call on Paula Ross, Diane Brown, Bernadette Noe, and Sam Thurber to resign their positions immediately. I also call on my fellow county residents, regardless of political persuasion, to urge the same.

If a clown failed miserably at entertaining, I doubt that anyone would hire him back. The voters of this county pay for and deserve far better. It is incumbent on us all to demand nothing less than total integrity in our election process. To allow less would be considered failure, and the four board members have given us plenty of that lately.

JAMES M. SZCZERBIAK

Maumee

In response to a July 23 letter, I have not seen Fahrenheit 9/11, but the writer stated that, "Michael Moore clearly states these flights took place after Sept. 13, which is when the FAA began to lift regulations."

However, in an interview with Michael Moore in the July, 2004, issue of Playboy magazine, Mr. Moore says, "You couldn't fly in America on Sept. 12 or 13 unless your name was bin Laden." So Mr. Moore is either lying in one of the two accounts, or the writer is misquoting Mr. Moore. If the writer is misquoting Mr. Moore, then this is a grievous attack on the reputations of two newscasters. Don't believe everything you read because someone is clearly wrong.

Thomas Fisher

Curtice

I've just returned to Toledo after two years living in Europe. In my experience the French are not so much anti-American as anti the present American administration. For that reason, I find a recent Kirk cartoon condescending and stooping to a cheap laugh. To mix American Lance Armstrong's Tour de France victory with a mean-spirited caricature of French disdain reinforces stereotypes and introduces even more contempt to the rift between countries.

Barbara Goodman Shovers

Indian Road

We can readily see what type of staff John Kerry will be surrounding himself with should he gain the White House.

Sandy Berger, former President Clinton's security adviser, and a staff member on Kerry's campaign, has been caught stealing classified documents, destroying some, and lying about it. Though he quickly resigned from the Kerry staff, it still stands that he was an adviser in good standing to Mr. Kerry - and in good standing with the Democratic Party.

A man with his political experience and knowledge of federal laws and security regulations who says he inadvertently took files home is an out-and-out liar. You don't inadvertently stick 30 pages of documents in your socks or pants pocket and walk away. Why not in the briefcase? Because he knew it would be searched and he was stealing the documents.

The media should be shouting high treason from the front page. But let us not be hasty - Mr. Berger was a staff member of John Kerry and the liberal media do not care if liberals lie and cheat to get their way.

Will there be no big, black headlines screaming for justice, no TV bobble heads wailing for charges and court dates?

Had it been a conservative or Republican, you can bet the media would be on his or her back 24/7.

Let's keep this in mind on Nov. 2.

Fred Nofziger

Maumee

The 9/11 report is in. The bipartisan 9/11 report. Surprise, the liar isn't President Bush but the Joe Wilsons and Michael Moores and all the other Democratic darlings who fabricate the myths that fuel the media's anti-Bush message. The President wasn't in bed with the Saudis, Iraq did try to buy uranium in Africa, and Mr. Bush wasn't warned weeks ahead that these terrorists would attack.

You won't hear much about these facts or the report's many others that spread the failures of 9/11 far and wide. The Blade, the New York Times, and other biased media don't like the message.

Bush-haters better get a grip on the fact that he is not the enemy they should focus on. The liberals' attention to everything anti-Bush is only playing into the hands of the real enemies of America, the ones who can kill us.

MATT SIGLER

Perrysburg

Joseph Stalin gave a speech to the people of Moscow in 1946, stating "[We] took the path of organizing large farms because it enabled us, in the course of several years, to cover the entire country with large farms and provide the country with the largest possible quantity of market produce."

Please tell us that is not what our government has planned for us. It failed then and if we cannot learn from history then we are doomed to repeat it.

A senator has told us that if the mega farms obey the law we can do nothing to stop them. But the senator made the laws. This legislative body tells us they do everything to protect us from terrorists and yet preventive measures to keep our air and drinking water clean seem of no importance to its members.

If the issue would be placed on the ballot and we could vote on our own fate, it might elevate the pressure on lawmakers, especially if big money is behind the scene. Is it?

CAROL KIRBY

Bloomdale, Ohio

Hooray for Teresa Heinz Kerry! It's about time some journalists were told to "shove it."

VIRGINIA M. NICHOLS

Sylvania