Premiums For Seniors In Bush’s Medicare Part D Program Soar 24.5%

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/7413

By Doug Cunningham

People enrolled in Bush’s Medicare Part D prescription drug program are seeing their premiums go up by 24 and a half percent. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says this is a case of private market competition failing to deliver lower prices.

: “I think what we get here is a story where competition gives us higher cost with very little if any obvious benefit."

Baker says Republicans who controlled Congress when this Medicare prescription drug plan was passed specifically barred the government from negotiating lower drug prices.

: “In the design of the plan there ere many of us who argued that Medicare should be negotiating directly with the industry and that way to keep prices down. But Congress expressly prohibited that."

[yourout]

1. The Dems had better beat the Pukes to death with this in the general election.

And the elderly turn out to vote with a fair amount of regularity.