South Carolina's senior citizens' concerns are the focus at the Statehouse this week as the Silver Haired Legislature meets. It comes up with recommendations to the real state legislature about senior citizens' priorities and concerns.

As you would imagine, most of them deal with health care issues.

For Greenville County delegate Charles Latimer,  "The continuation of the SilverCard, which provides for medicine for those who can't afford it, is an important issue because we have had in the past individuals who had to choose between food and medicine." 

SilverCard could disappear by 2007 because it's funded mostly with federal money, and the federal Medicare program has come out with its own prescription drug program. The only way to continue SilverCard would be for the state to start paying for all of it.

Sen. Hugh Leatherman, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that helps write the state budget, says that could happen.

"I think so. The SilverCard program has been a tremendous help for our senior citizens and I think it's a good program. I think we need to figure out a way to do that." 

Another major issue for seniors is for the state to hire more ombudsmen, who look into complaints at nursing homes. There are only 15 ombudsmen now to cover the entire state.

Jasper County delegate Gladys Jones says, "We have a report this week of a real severe beating in one of our nursing homes in the state, and that's because they know we don't have the help we need to investigate." 

Tom Lloyd, speaker of the Silver Haired Legislature, says, "Rural transportation is a serious problem, to help those elderly who cannot drive and get out and do the things they need to do for their daily living."

The Silver Haired Legislature also supports requiring criminal background checks for people who provide in-home health care and work in adult daycare facilities. They were successful in pushing for the checks for nursing home employees.

All of these ideas cost money, but Sen. Leatherman says the state might be able to pay for some of them, after several years of budget cuts. "The economy's picked back up. We've paid off the $155 million debt. We've absolutely secured our triple-A credit rating," he says. "We'll look at revenues that are available to us, try to determine how many of these programs we can fund."