*WHAT MEDICARE WILL DO

The medicare bill will not solve all the problems of growing old--but it will certainly make the process much less costly to the elderly. It is actually three programs in one.

Part 1 is a hospitalization program, to be financed under social security, for which persons 65 or older will automatically qualify.

Those thus eligible would have to pay only the first $40 of hospital charges of up to 60 days. The Government will pay for rooms in two-to four-bed quarters and for food, medicines, drugs and care by internes and nurses. After a hospital stay of at least three days, a patient may transfer to a Government-approved nursing home for free convalescent care of at least 20 days and at most 100 days.

Going back home, the oldster could receive, according to his doctor's advice, up to 100 free visits by a visiting nurse. And 60 days after discharge from a hospital or nursing home, the elderly person would be eligible for another round of all the same benefits.

Part 2 is a voluntary program providing major additional benefits for people 65 or over.

For $3 a month, oldsters can enroll in a plan providing for doctor's care--whether furnished in a hospital, clinic, office or at home, and including surgeon's services. Each person would pay the first $50 annual doctor's fees; after that, the Government would pay 80% of the rest. Thus, if an elderly person had a major operation that cost $2,000 for surgeon's fees, he would have to pay only $440 (the first $50 plus 20% of the $1,950 balance). The program would pay the remaining $1,560.

The voluntary program would pay 80% of the costs of medical extras, such as limited ambulance service, X-rays and lab tests, electrocardiograms and radiotherapy, surgical dressings, splints, casts, artificial arms, legs and eyes, and even rental for home use of iron lungs and wheelchairs. Under the same 80% formula, the voluntary plan would further provide 100 home-nurse visits a year with or without prior hospitalization, thus supplementing the benefits that come under the compulsory social security part of the medicare program. Also provided: care in a mental hospital, of no more than 60 days at a time, for a lifetime maximum of 180 days.

The burden of the $3-a-month premiums would be eased considerably by a basic 7% increase in old-age pension checks, retroactive to last January. The maximum monthly social security payment of $127 would immediately rise to $135.90, but everyone would get at least $4 more a month to spend. A simultaneous liberalization of social security rules would, among other things, bring self-employed doctors into the program for the first time--making them eligible for medicare, too, at age 65.

Part 3 extends the present Kerr-Mills medical-assistance-for-the-aged program.

At a federal cost of some $200 million a year, basic medical care will be provided, on an outright charity basis, not only for indigents over 65, as at present, but for those of any age, such as destitute families, homeless children, the disabled and the blind.

How will medicare be paid for? Approximately $5 billion a year will come from the voluntary premiums and from higher social security taxes for everyone; these will be more than doubled during the next two decades. The remaining $1 billion a year that will be required will come out of the Federal Government's general revenue fund.

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