Sylvester Turner: “It is amazing to me how hard the pharmaceutical industry is fighting to preserve the status quo. The gentleman from…”

“It is amazing to me how hard the pharmaceutical industry is fighting to preserve the status quo. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) mentioned Citizens for Better Medicare. The first time I ran into that group I thought this must be a group of seniors trying to improve Medicare. We got to looking into it, and we found out just what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) said, and that is it is an arm of the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, studies showed in the first 6 months of this year, the so-called Citizens for Better Medicare spent $65 million in advertising to try to persuade the Congress and the American people to preserve the status quo. They ran TV ads with a character on it, a lady named Flo, and she began to talk about how she did not want government in her medicine chest. Then we had letters mailed out to our seniors. I had a gentleman in Wal-Mart, a friend of mine, I have known him for years, John Perkins, walked up to me in the parking lot and said, ``Here Jim, I have got a letter that said to write you, and now that I have caught you, it will save me writing a letter.'' I said, ``Well, fine, John, what do you have?'' He said, ``Well, here is this letter.'' It kind of looked like a telegram. And down at the bottom it said Citizens for Better Medicare. I read it.…”