For Immediate Release Contact
Jon
Greenbaum 880-8731
Rally Calls
for Overhauling Bush’s Rx Drug Plan
With President Bush still en
route to Canandaigua, hundreds of people gathered at the Bella Lago Party
House in Canandaigua and raucously called for a total overhaul of the Part
D Prescription Drug Plan.
Speakers pointed out that
President Bush’s prescription drug plan was written by and for the drug and
insurance companies, emphasizing that the bill prohibits Medicare from
negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. The Veterans
Administration saves more than 40% on the cost of wholesale drug prices by
negotiating with drug companies, but the White House inserted a provision
in the Part D Prescription Drug bill to prohibit Medicare from negotiating
for lower prices.
Healthcare advocates pointed out
that the President’s plan has high copays and holes in coverage and that consumers, with multiple medications, are hit with
multiple copays. After seniors are locked into the plans, the insurance
companies are free to change prices and pull drugs off their lists. Seniors
are also concerned that they will choose a plan that will not cover
prescriptions that they might need down the road. The loudest
criticisms, however, concern how the Part D plan prohibits negotiating drug
prices with the pharmaceutical companies.
“The President’s Part D plan
hands over the prescription drug plans to the insurance companies. We need
to take the plan out of the hands of the insurance company middlemen and
bring it into Medicare and allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug
prices,” explains Jon Greenbaum, Metro Justice Organizer.
Although the Bush administration
is claiming 25 million enrollees in the program, only a fifth of those
enrollees are there voluntarily, the rest were automatically enrolled. The
Rally was organized by Metro Justice and Rochester Area Task Force on AIDS.
Other sponsors include Citizen Action New York, Rochester
and Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation, Americans United for Change,
Campaign for America’s
Future, Tompkins County Healthcare Task Force
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