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PALM HARBOR - The parking lot at the Palm Harbor Senior Activity Center was overflowing, and volunteers helped latecomers park along the grassy shoulders of 16th Street. Yard signs led them to the entrance:
Rx in Medicare NOW!
Get the job done!
AARP
The AARP is an impressive outfit. Its volunteers, sporting light-blue shirts, lined up along the sidewalk to greet the arrivals. They ushered them into the main hall, past displays and brochures and a table of stuff with the AARP logo. At one end of the room there was a lectern and a backdrop for the TV cameras, and at the other end a bingo machine. The chairs in the room could be turned around after the meeting.
The official purpose of Thursday morning's meeting was to "educate the public" about the debate in Washington over expanding Medicare to cover prescription drugs.
The more practical purpose was to collect angry quotes on videotape and maybe some TV coverage by marching down to the local congressman's office. The state AARP was joined in these efforts by the Florida Consumer Action Network.
When Congress came up with Medicare back in 1965, for people disabled or over 65, it didn't include prescriptions. The people who wrote that law grew up in different times. "Medicine" mostly meant the family doctor. Who knew that we would invent so many magic pills, that they would become so crucial, or that they would be so brutally expensive?
The 150 or so attendees certainly did their part when it was their turn. Most of the speakers said:
1. Yes, give us free prescription drugs.
2. No matter how much or how little money we have.
3. We've earned it. (The first use of the phrase "greatest generation" occurred at 11:05 a.m., 35 minutes into the meeting.)
U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Tarpon Springs, a big shot on the committee handling this, was booked elsewhere locally, his office said. So a staff guy from Washington spoke.
The staff guy, Pat Morrisey, was pretty weak if you ask me. He glossed over the fact that the bill in Congress is exactly what the AARP says it doesn't want. Shouldn't rich guys like Ross Perot have to pay "just a little bit?" he asked. He lulled 'em, too. When he was done, only one guy yelled, "Boo!"
Another citizen asked about Bilirakis' campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. I liked that.
"You raise an excellent question," Morrisey said, then weasled out of the question completely. He warned that unless we do something about Medicare, it will swell from 12 percent of the federal budget today to as much as 30 percent by the year 2030.
Thirty percent! Imagine that. Almost a third of every dollar taken in by the U.S. government. This dire news did not appreciably change the tenor of the meeting, however. Nobody jumped up and said, "Holy cow, maybe we should rethink this for our grandkids!"
Except maybe for Gloria Caruso of Tampa.
She is a fairly rare thing, a five-year lung cancer survivor. She told me that she never smoked, but sat in close quarters with smokers and breathed their air for 20 years, taking reservations first for Eastern and then Northwest airlines.
Caruso stood up and declared that a trial drug helped her. She believes it extended her life, and she does not automatically look upon drug companies as the enemy.
"I don't believe we should get it for nothing," Caruso said. She said everybody should have to pay a reasonable premium. Nobody booed her, but nobody stood up and cheered.
After the meeting, the consumer-action folks and a few of the rest went up U.S. 19 to Bilirakis' office. Seniors at the meeting had written down comments and rolled them up inside little pill bottles, which were delivered to the congressman's office.
"Where's Mike?" sneered the flier advertising the demonstration. "He won't come listen to us, let's go see him!" Like, you know, they figured Bilirakis was sitting on a yacht somewhere, gleefully cackling, "Here I am, callously disregarding the good of the people!" No doubt he was out doing good for the people somewhere, even if his office wouldn't say exactly what it was.