Nancy L. Johnson: “I am proud to say that our bill is an entitlement. It is going to be available to all seniors. It is going to be in my…”

“I am proud to say that our bill is an entitlement. It is going to be available to all seniors. It is going to be in my estimation, I think this is something that is rarely remembered, that the prescription drug benefit is going to be the greatest leap forward in women's health since the founding of Medicare. We all know that our grandmothers have lived longer than our grandfathers, that in general women tend to live quite a lot longer than men. What we are less aware of is that older women tend to have a lot less income than older men. The mean annual income of men over 65 is about $30,000 nationwide. The mean annual income of women over 65 is about $15,000 nationwide, exactly half. So women live longer but have much less disposable income. In fact, in the under-85 and the over-85 senior population, women are almost twice as likely as men to have incomes below $10,000 a year. What this tells you is that our retired women in America are very unlikely to be able to afford expensive prescription drugs, and they are very unlikely to be able to afford MediGap policies and those other supplementary insurance plans that are available but cost money and that fill that gap between what Medicare covers and what seniors have to pay.”