Karen Thurman: “I want to ask the gentlewoman a question because I think it does go to the issue of the Medicare prescription drug…”

“I want to ask the gentlewoman a question because I think it does go to the issue of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. I am going to talk a little bit about a report that was just released that was done to look at the prescription drug coverage. And the loss of prescription drug coverage in Florida has gone from something like 26 percent to 41 percent within just 2 years for our senior population. In the estimation of the gentlewoman, and particularly as we look at the buy-back bill that we are talking about on the Medicare, on the home health care agencies and hospitals and other things, in her professional career, would the gentlewoman agree that because of the hardship that people face in buying prescription drugs, and in fact we know that they are not taking the medicines as they have been prescribed, they are cutting them in half, they are taking them a different day, they are giving us the excuses that they want to make sure their spouse has them instead of them.”