This week, KPTZ’s Chris Bricker and co-host Siobhan Canty, President & CEO of Jefferson Community Foundation, speak with Ellen Menshaw and Lori Bernstein, activists and organizers from Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA). The passage of Medicare in 1965 was historic for covering the medical needs of seniors, but it also created conditions highly attractive for the providers of health care, who the government desperately wanted to accommodate. The arrangement resulted in the federal government surrendering the terms of the program and its costs to private health insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors, who would shape Medicare to maximize their profits at the expense of taxpayers – from 1965 until today. If the trajectory continues, Medicare faces an increasing likelihood of becoming insolvent in the next decade, and barring the passage of Universal Healthcare, privatization will be the result. Ellen and Lori provide us with background and more resources for education, a list of informative events coming up, and ways to get involved.
