Medicare Prescription Drug Disaster: Bush Still Doesn’t Get It (with video)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/11/13/medicare-prescription-drug-disaster-bush-still-doesn%e2%80%99t-get-it/


Medicare Prescription Drug Disaster: Bush Still Doesn’t Get It

by Tula Connell, Nov 13, 2006

On Fox News Sunday, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the federal government does not need to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for seniors. Bartlett said that prices have “come down” and drugs already are cheap enough (watch the video clip at ThinkProgress).

Funny. Millions of retired seniors say they went to the polls because they are extremely dissatisfied with the Medicare prescription drug plan Bush and his Republican cronies rammed through Congress in 2003. As the Alliance for Retired Americans noted:

Specific defeats of anti-senior incumbents such as Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Nancy Johnson in Connecticut and Clay Shaw in Florida were a strong rebuke to those who misused their leadership positions to side with the big drug and insurance companies instead of their constituents. Johnson was the author of the badly-flawed Medicare prescription drug law, and Shaw was a champion of privatizing Social Security. In these three races, and in many others, retirees sent out-of-touch politicians straight into retirement.

Not to mention the defeat of Rep. Melissa Hart, whose campaign staff called the police on seniors when Alliance members stopped by her office a couple of weeks ago. They wanted to express their displeasure over her role in supporting the Medicare drug plan and the nearly $3,000 seniors have to pay out of pocket after their drug costs top $2,000. Edward Coyle, executive director of the Alliance, puts it this way:

Retired Americans were a key part of Tuesday’s historic elections. In the major House and Senate races across the country, there was a clear mandate to lower the cost of prescription drugs and better protect the retirement security of all Americans.

Ever since he admitted in his post-election press conference that working families “thumped” the GOP, President Bush has made the obligatory noises about bipartisan cooperation, getting press mileage out of lunching with Speaker of the House-to-be Nancy Pelosi and meeting with Senate leaders such as Harry Reid, the likely Senate majority leader for the 110th Congress.

With reform of the Medicare prescription drug law a key goal of voters and newly elected Democrats, the Bush administration’s position that no reform is necessary doesn’t exactly sound like a bipartisan approach.

But then, look at Bush’s record. While running for office in 2000, Bush promised to be “a uniter, not a divider.” But as outgoing senator and moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee pointed out over the weekend, that promise was a sham. Meeting with Bush and Vice President Cheney shortly after the 2000 elections, Chafee writes:

As we sat in Senator Specter’s cozy hideaway office and discussed the coming session, I was startled to hear the vice president dismiss suggestions of compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively partisan agenda that included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of international agreements and a muscular, unilateral foreign policy.

Bush bipartisanship? Will he or won’t he? We’ll keep you informed in more Bipartisan Watch posts.

Video works from link.

[texpatriot2004]

1. No, he still doesn't get it nm

[underpants]

2. Here are the facts (from ThinkProgress)

Here are the facts about the Medicare prescription drug plan:

– Taxpayers “could save as much as $190 billion over the next 10 years” if Medicare negotiated prices with drug makers.

– Medicare pays substantially more for drugs that the Veterans Administration, which negotiates prices with drug makers.

– Since the program does not require any discount over list prices, “drug makers are being paid as much as 20 percent more for the same drugs that they had already been providing to recipients under the Medicaid program .”

[ClintonTyree]

3. Hmmmm..... drugs are already cheap enough....

and don't need to come down, huh? I guess that's why my Medicaid Part D prescription drug premiums increased 314%. Yeah, that's right, 314% and they increased the co-pays as well. I guess Humana didn't get the memo. :eyes: Now I have to navigate that morass of insurers again to find a cheaper one. Thanks, George Bush! :mad: