Political Quotes

“today marks the first day seniors can enroll in the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. When the Medicare drug bill passed this House more than 2 years ago, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle touted it as the greatest health care achievement since Medicare's inception. Today, we have a different reality. The Medicare drug benefit is an absolute failure. The way this thing is designed, one would think that Brownie from FEMA had something to do with it. It is a failure because of its complexity and inability to provide seniors with access to affordable drugs. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said this benefit would help 42 million Americans who are served by Medicare. But the only people who are really benefiting from this benefit are the pharmaceutical companies who gave $132 million over 10 years and have walked away with $139 billion in additional profits from this bill. Insurers who gave well over $100 million to the Republican Party are awarded with over $130 billion in additional profits, all paid for by the taxpayers. This bill was never designed with the customer in mind. This legislation was designed with the pharmaceutical companies and the HMOs and the insurance companies in mind. They could never have designed something this complex if they were thinking of people who were 65 years and older whose 60 cents out of every dollar for their health care goes to prescription drugs.…”