Glenn English: “Every August I go back to my district and I take the time to have a series of town meetings, particularly with seniors.…”

“Every August I go back to my district and I take the time to have a series of town meetings, particularly with seniors. And as I went back this August, I attended meetings at senior centers and I went to Labor Day fairs, and when I talked to seniors this was the single topic that they seemed to be focused on. This is the single issue that seems to directly affect their lives almost regardless of their personal circumstances. Seniors were telling me stories, and too many times that plot included skipped doses or the act of cutting pills in half in order to save money on the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. And in my district in northwestern Pennsylvania it is odd, but senior groups have felt obliged to charter buses to drive more than 2 hours to Canada in search of lower drug costs. That is an extraordinary anamnesis, a trip they should not have to be making, and it is just further evidence that we ought to be putting politics aside and trying to get signed into law a prescription drug plan that will protect seniors and relieve them from the expensive prescription drug market where they simply cannot keep up. We have discussed different plans on the floor of the House, but the one thing we can all agree on is no senior should have to choose between buying food and buying their life-sustaining medicines.”