Sylvester Turner: “for years the pleas of our hurting seniors fell on the deaf ears of our Republican majority until one day our Republican…”

“for years the pleas of our hurting seniors fell on the deaf ears of our Republican majority until one day our Republican friends were struck with an ingenious idea, wrapping a plan to privatize Medicare into a deceptive package called prescription drugs for seniors. It keeps the drug companies happy because they can still charge twice as much for medicine here as anywhere else in the world. It keeps insurance companies happy by paying them 25 percent more to cover seniors than taxpayers pay to cover seniors under traditional Medicare. It keeps doctors and hospitals happy by paying them billions while leading them like sheep into the perils of managed care. And it costs taxpayers $400 billion for a meager prescription drug savings of 25 percent, a savings that could be achieved at no cost to taxpayers by giving seniors the right to buy drugs at the same price they can get them in Canada. All this slight of hand to force seniors into private insurance and some day to give them a voucher and tell them fend for yourself. No security, no certainty, no guaranty of coverage, you are on your own. And the promise of Medicare is no more. My seniors in east Texas see right through this. In a poll conducted tonight, over 6,000 seniors in my district, 85 percent said they were opposed to the Republican plan. Dress it all up as fancy as you can, it is a bad deal for America's seniors and they know it.”