Kevin Brady: “I am a member of the Ways and Means Committee, proud to have helped create the Medicare prescription plan; it is really…”

“I am a member of the Ways and Means Committee, proud to have helped create the Medicare prescription plan; it is really helping a lot of our seniors in Texas, especially those who are very poor and have some of the most expensive illnesses. I think we can do more to improve the Medicare prescription drug plan, we ought to work better together; but I oppose directing the Federal Government to interfere with the successful Medicare prescription drug plan. If you look closely, this is a senior scam. I am warning my mom, who is on Medicare, that this is just another senior scam. It sounds fantastic, but when you read the fine print, you realize the only savings you get is, if you just restrict the drugs that she can get, you limit where she can go to get them, and every expert says this won't save a dime. Sure, I can save everyone in this room costs on their medicines. I am just going to, like the VA does, I will tell you, you can't have those medicines and you can't get them where you need them. Our seniors, my mom has a choice of 4,000 drugs, if she was in the VA, she would get a choice of a thousand, most of them generics. Now she has 55,000 pharmacies, hopefully she won't go to all of them; with VA, she would get to go to 300 of them. If she tried to find the drugs she needs, a one out of four chance she would find the one she really needs. The truth of the matter is that we ought to be working together to help improve Medicare.”