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Stories from the Medicare Waiting Period |
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From Commonwealth Fund Newsfeed: In the United States, nearly 7 million people under age 65 qualify for Medicare due to severe and permanent disabilities. However, these individuals must wait two years after they are deemed eligible for Social Security Disability Insurance to receive this coverage. As a result, there are as many as 1.5 million men and women who are too disabled to return to work but who must waiting to receive Medicare coverage for their health care needs. Nearly 39 percent are uninsured for at least some of the time during the waiting period, and 26 percent have no insurance throughout the waiting period. This report tells the stories of 21 individuals struggling to survive the 24-month waiting period. These real-life stories expose the financial hardship, pain, and suffering caused by the waiting period and provide evidence of the need for the swift enactment of legislation to eliminate the waiting period. The promise of secure health care coverage to younger people, who through illness or injury had lost their ability to work, was a natural extension of a program that already brought health and security to older Americans. However, people who are deemed eligible by the Social Security Administration for Social Security Disability Insurance due to severe and permanent disability receive Medicare coverage only after a two-year waiting period. Calling the 24-month waiting period an "arbitrary and cruel restriction," Senator Robert Torricelli (D--N.J.), an author of the bill, remarked that eliminating the waiting period "will mean that no ALS patient will ever again be faced with the indignity of going bankrupt while waiting for Medicare assistance." Meanwhile, people with other disabling conditions continue to suffer.
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