David Price: “we began this effort years ago with a relatively simple concept: let us add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare…”

“we began this effort years ago with a relatively simple concept: let us add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, giving help to the countless older Americans who so desperately need it. But this bill has ended up doing the very thing seniors do not want us to do--to privatize their coverage. Little do they know that the so-called prescription drug benefit will operate nothing like their other Medicare benefits. An enormous sticker shock awaits them. If a senior needs $5,000 worth of medication, he or she will have to pay $4,000 in order to get it. If drug costs are $3,500, he or she will pay $2,500. This bill has a gaping so-called doughnut hole where any drug costs that fall between $2,250 and $5,100 are not covered at all. Do you think that is what our constituents have in mind when they think of prescription drug coverage? But this spotty coverage is not the worst of it. An even more unpleasant surprise awaits. This bill forces Medicare beneficiaries to get drug coverage through private companies or an HMO. Our Republican friends would apparently rather do anything than strengthen basic Medicare, so they have devised a convoluted scheme to throw enough money at private companies to induce them to offer drug- only policies, policies which these same companies say make no sense in terms of insurance principles.”