Celebration of Medicare

Here we go again with another piece of utter stupidity, callousness and insanity displayed by Reagan Administration leaders. I am referring this time to the news item (Times, June 21) relating to a planned $350,000 celebration of the 20th birthday of Medicare and Medicaid this summer.

Some of the insanity in all this comes from the fact that these programs for seniors and the needy have been cut and continue to be slated for cuts in the future. So what the devil are these clowns in Washington celebrating when the real fact is they really want to bury these programs?

Chairman Edward Roybal (D-Los Angeles) of the House Select Committee on Aging, in the aforementioned news item, criticized this whole plan, pointing out that the announcement of this celebration “coincides with a Los Angeles Conference on Medicare and Medicaid at which the government is charging a registration fee as high as $600.”

According to Roybal, “the half-million dollars being spent on the L.A. conference and the 20th anniversary celebration could buy 1,300 hospital days or 10,000 doctor visits or 40,000 drug prescriptions for the aged and the poor.”

Dennis Siebert, spokesman for the Health Care Financing Administration, which runs Medicare and Medicaid, states the cost of the celebration of $250,000 to $350,000 as being small compared with the $95 million spent annually on Medicare and Medicaid! Where are Siebert and his cohorts coming from? $350,000 is a heck of a lot of money--anyplace, anywhere, anyhow--to throw around for a pointless party that celebrates nothing but misery, frustration and contempt for the less affluent.

Here’s another example of the uncaring, wasteful thinking that allows outrageously priced ashtrays and toilet seats--and a destructive defense and nuclear buildup that we don’t need.

REBECCA SCHULMAN

Los Angeles