Health insurance and prescription drugs will be the topics for September’s Triad meeting. Larry Miller, training officer for Indiana’s Senior Health Insurance Program will be our speaker. SHIP is part of a federal network of State Health Insurance Assistance Programs located in every state. In Indiana, SHIP is sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Triad meeting will be at the Anderson Public Library at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. Several General Motors employees who recently lost their insurance benefits may want to attend this meeting.

FSSA, MEDICAID, FOOD STAMPS

FSSA has lost sight of the fact that it is not just an agency that hands out benefits. It is an agency that is supposed to allow families to try to restore the lives of their children who are suffering from debilitating diseases. FSSA is supposed to help those who have anguished over how to help their children, who through no fault of their own, are disabled or seriously ill and need to have medicine and therapy to try to live near normal lives.

FSSA is an agency that is supposed to help other victims of debilitating illnesses and their families so that they can have a decent quality of life. FSSA is supposed to help those families who have loved ones who are nearing the ends of their lives. They should help the victims and their families get access to benefits that they cannot afford. FSSA should be trying to help the Hoosiers who are faced with the pain and suffering that accompanies these serious illnesses. Nobody in Indiana, because they are poor, should have to suffer a horrible, painful end to their life. Their families should not be forced to stand by helplessly while their loved ones are dying a terrible death because they cannot afford to help them because they are poor.

Last Friday, Mitch Roob brought his FSSA SWAT team to Anderson to offer assistance to the elderly, the disabled and the disadvantaged who have been deprived of their benefits due to the contract that Roob agreed to with the IBM coalition. Because of this IBM modernization system, thousands of legitimate Medicare and Food Stamp clients across the state have been denied benefits that they had been receiving. The new system is a terrible substitute for the face-to-face system that it replaced. The Herald Bulletin on Saturday reported FSSA helped 22 people with this effort. More than 10 times that amount of Madison County’s neediest people are still going without help. Very few people even knew they were in town. This is Roob’s “Band-Aid” answer to stop a hemorrhage.

Many people who are very ill have lost their benefits for frustrating and unreasonable accusations. Social caseworkers, attorneys and not-for-profit agencies have also complained about how burdensome the new privatization has become. If professionals find the system frustrating, imagine how hard it is for the elderly, the disabled and other disadvantaged people in need of help.

Many people are going hungry and cannot find a decent job that would allow them the luxury of taking care of their loved ones. We have veterans and other hard-working, decent Hoosiers who are victims of the greed of the multinational corporations. They take these jobs from our country and transfer them to countries that approve slave labor. They reward bosses with bonuses for saving the corporations’ money on the backs of workers who are losing their jobs. FSSA is the last chance for some of these people to find a tiny bit of dignity and hope.

Dennis Lanane is chairman of Madison County Triad. He can be reached by e-mail at qparadigm@iquest.net.