Political Quotes

“one of the things I find deeply disturbing is while seniors have to wait for whatever meager benefits are in this bill, $46 billion has begun to be spent and given to HMOs to subsidize this effort now. Money is being spent from the Medicare bill we passed, but it is not being spent on helping people be able to pay for their medicine, which is another outrage, frankly, in this legislation. It is true, we see nothing in here that will allow Medicare to negotiate group prices. There is one thing we thought was going to be helpful this year, a discount card. We were told it would provide from a 10-percent to 25-percent discount on prescription drugs. These are going to be available in the next couple of months. As the Wall Street Journal has reported, the prescription drug provision for our seniors and the disabled increased 3.5 times faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2002. The prices for prescription drugs has increased more than 3.5 times the rate of inflation in the last year and a half.”