Berkley: Medicare fix needed — and a way to pay for it

Ed Koch and Jerry Fink

Friday, April 9, 1999 | 10:34 a.m.

Rep. Shelley Berkley has been in Southern Nevada this week hammering home her concerns for health care.

On Thursday before 75 people at a Nevada Seniors Coalition meeting, she said there is a great need to fix the nation's Social Security and Medicare systems. However Berkley, a member of the Social Security Commission, admits she does not know how Congress will pay for the fix.

On Wednesday, Berkley, D-Nev., held a public forum to listen to health care complaints of local veterans. She and fellow congressman Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Veterans' Affairs Deputy Secretary Hershel Gober got an earful from both veterans who are patients and health care workers.

"After 12 weeks on the job, I am hardly an expert, but I have a pretty good understanding of what is going on," Berkley told the senior group at a morning meeting at the Showboat hotel-casino.

"We have a Social Security Trust Fund that by 2032 will be broke. We need to fix it now."

Berkley said proposals to fix the problem, brought on by years of the government borrowing an estimated $7 trillion from the fund, include privatization and better investments.

Berkley, whose district has the fastest-growing senior and veterans populations in the country, was one of three freshman House members appointed to the 50-member Social Security Commission.

She said that while people are reluctant to increase payroll taxes, cut benefits or raise the mandatory age of retirement, they want and expect to have a Social Security check waiting for them when they reach retirement.

"Medicare is in worse financial shape than Social Security," she told the small gathering, noting that 37 million Americans 65 and older depend on Medicare.

She favors Medicare providing for prescription medicines -- if not at 100 percent, at least at an affordable cost.

"Some seniors have to make the choice of buying food, paying rent and keeping the electricity on or buy prescription medicine that will keep them alive," she said. "No American should have to be confronted with that choice.

"But how are we going to fund it?"

A day earlier, at the veterans meeting at the Addeliar Guy VA Ambulatory Care Center, Dr. Frank Toppo told Berkley and the others on the panel that the paperwork has exploded in recent years, contributing to a lower quality of care for veterans.

"It may take a nurse 45 minutes just to do the paperwork on a patient here," Toppo said.

Berkley, who has been appointed to the Veterans Affairs Committee, said she is working hard to make life better for the veterans, who move into Clark County at an estimated rate of about 700 a month.

"There are not enough doctors and technicians to take care of the workload," she said. "So many veterans have to go out of state for treatment. And in many instances patients have to wait three, four or five months to see a doctor."

Berkley urged the local veterans to help her "educate the decision makers in Washington."

Toppo said a veteran may wait as long as 188 days to see a gastroenterologist at the center, 145 days to see a dermatologist or 111 days to see a lung specialist.

Bill Brezinski of the state Disabled American Veterans agency criticized the hiring practices of the VA.

"They're hiring upper management people instead of the doctors and nurses that are needed," he said.