Shelley Berkley: “I have always believed in providing a prescription medication benefit under the Medicare system. It makes no sense to me…”

“I have always believed in providing a prescription medication benefit under the Medicare system. It makes no sense to me that we have a Medicare system that allows seniors to see a doctor, the doctor prescribes the least expensive, most cost-effective way of dealing with illness, which is prescription medication. Many of the seniors in my district and throughout the United States cannot afford the prescription medication that the doctor prescribes. I know that the doctors are suffering and that there is a real crisis in health care and that our doctors need to be appropriately reimbursed for the Medicare patients that they see. But what I am opposed to is privatizing the Medicare system, and that is what this legislation does. Make no mistake about it, this legislation, rather than being a prescription drug plan, rather than being a Medicare reimbursement plan for doctors, what this is is the first step in privatizing Medicare, and that would be a disaster for our seniors. I urge my colleagues to vote for this motion.”