Nancy L. Johnson: “That is a very, very important point. We do not want to shift costs from the private sector to the public sector, and we…”

“That is a very, very important point. We do not want to shift costs from the private sector to the public sector, and we do not want to do it for another important reason. Many of the people who have coverage through former employers have very, very good coverage, and they have total choice of prescription or generic or whatever is best for them personally. If we look at Medicaid, if we look at the big managed care plans, we tend to have the choice of those drugs offered in a formulary. Maybe that formulary, in other words the choices of drugs, will be good. Maybe it will not. In the Patients' Bill of Rights we are going to give certain rights to go outside the formulary, but they will have to be documented by health need. And sometimes we would just rather have the one that we believe is going to be the best for us. That kind of total choice is not common in the plans that are out there now. And in order to provide a range of plans, in order to allow people who have that total choice through their employer to keep it, we need to provide many solutions so seniors have their choice of the kind of drug plan that will best suit them. We need to protect them from catastrophic costs. We need to guarantee that if there are a seniors out there with a $4,000, $6,000 annual income, they will have prescription drug coverage.”