Bush Medicare Ads Blasted As Deceptive PR

by Donal Brown

(PNS) -- Critics blasted the Bush administration's recent advertisements for Medicare's new prescription drug benefit as self-serving public relations messages.

But the ads are also seriously flawed for excluding ethnic groups with large percentages of elderly who speak a language other than English or Spanish, the critics said. Among the missed critical target audiences is the growing number of Asian American elderly.

The Medicare ads will run through March. Those on CBS, NBC, ABC and cable are all in English, while the radio ads are in English and Spanish, according to Bill Pierce, spokesperson of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Aimee Baldillo, attorney for the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium in Washington, D.C., says there are 804,731 Asian and Pacific Islander American households deemed "linguistically isolated," with no one the age of 14 or older who can speak English proficiently.

She also says that of Asians and Pacific Islanders 65 years or older, 242,636 are linguistically isolated and 455,592 cannot speak English very well.

Census 2000 figures show that 7.11 percent of the nation's 11,859,446 Asian Americans are 65 and older. Nearly a third of these elderly are in linguistically isolated households and the majority doesn't speak English very well.

In California, 10.73 percent of the 1,111,508 Chinese Americans are 65 or older. Nearly half of these elderly live in linguistically isolated households, and 77 percent don't speak English very well.

Baldillo accuses HHS of not working hard enough to comply with Title 6 under the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 13166 instructing recipients of federal funding, including government services, to increase access for limited-English-speaking constituencies.

Pierce says the Medicare Handbook on the HHS website has been translated not only into Spanish, but also Chinese. He says HHS also has translated a two-page fact sheet into 17 languages including Chinese.

Baldillo and others acknowledge that HHS has made some information on its website available in Asian languages, but they argue that too many of the elderly are poor and don't have access to computers.

"We think it's indicative of the insensitivity of the government to ignore the Asian and Pacific Islander communities," Baldillo says. "They need to do more to come into compliance with executive order 13166."

Pierce says the government never intended the Medicare ads as the end-all, saying they were only the beginning of its campaign. He adds that the website and phone access were crucial in providing information since citizens using these sources can stay on as long as they need to.

Vicki Gottlich, an attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Washington, D.C., is also concerned that the ads are limited to English and Spanish. "The new Medicare law places the burden on the individual to choose how to get their health care," she says. "Without information in the language they are used to speaking, the elderly can't make an informed and good choice."

The government ads paint the new Medicare law in rosy hues, assuring TV and radio audiences that Medicare is unchanged except for the prescription drug coverage. But critics argue that there are actually many changes, some of which will mean more out-of-pocket expenses. The new law restricts Medigap prescription insurance, introduces means-testing of premiums for supplemental or Part B Medicare and indexes deductibles for Part B to inflation.

Gottlich also criticizes the ads for failing to provide basic information such as the fact that the drug prescription benefits do not begin until 2006. She also says the ads neglect to mention that the new law is going to cost the elderly more in initial deductibles and co-payments.

Vivian Chang, a director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in Oakland, California, says the cuts in services come at a bad time for poor urban seniors. With the cost of living, particularly rents, going up, it is difficult for seniors to manage when the safety net is cut.

A survey by Chang's group showed that seniors are forced to go for a long time without treatment or seeing doctors that could provide preventative care. The survey showed 42 percent of Oakland's Asian immigrant population regularly cutting back on health care to pay rent.

Critics stress that the government has an obligation to increase its efforts to reach out to the limited-English-speaking elderly poor so they will know the changes the laws affecting their welfare.