by Mary Savage
Sha-na-na’s Jon “Bowzer” Bauman, 77, took a few minutes away from full-time advocacy for senior citizens’ issues when he sat down with talk-show host Walter Gottlieb for a conversation about the perilous times senior citizens face today. Bauman, a celebrity singer and actor known for wearing muscle shirts and promoting a “greaser” persona, has for decades championed the preservation and strengthening of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and lowering prescription drug prices. He has done so recently for Social Security Works and, not too long ago, for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
“In order to give back to our country and our society, we need to protect and expand these programs that we’re talking about today,” Bauman said on a NCPSSM podcast.
Bauman spoke with host Gottlieb, whose 90-year-old mother currently resides in an assisted living facility but may one day have to go to a nursing home for long-term care. Few Americans know that most long-term care is paid for by Medicaid and, at press time, Medicaid is targeted for massive cuts by the Republican-controlled Congress and White House.
“It’s like we have to keep fighting these battles over and over again,” Gottlieb said about the GOP’s constant targeting of programs that benefit senior citizens. And the cuts are falsely sold to the public as stopping waste, fraud and abuse.
At press time, the Republican Congress was working on a bill that cuts $880 billion dollars from Medicaid. Bauman said word must get out to the public about this terrible bill.
“Medicaid pays for over 60 percent of long-term care in America,” he said. “Long-term care is something that effects everybody … A lot of people don’t understand what Medicaid is really about and they need to know.”
Gottlieb agreed: “I don’t want to find out that almost a trillion dollars was cut from [Medicaid] and that [Mom] can’t get adequate care. It’s BS.”
The conversation soon turned to a most important question: How do we go about doing this?
The answer was simple: We need to constantly contact Congress and advocate for these programs. Not only contact elected officials from red states and red districts, but also contact elected officials in blue states and blue districts. “These are issues that affect everybody,” Bauman said. “They affect Republican voters, they affect independent voters, they affect Democratic voters. They affect everybody. These are your earned benefits….”
And the message needs to get out not only to friends, but also to those outside our circles of comfort: “We need to show up and make our case to people who aren’t watching MSNBC,” Bauman said.
To hear the entire NCPSSM podcast, go to: tinyurl.com/Iguana2176.