http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/11/13/medicare-prescription-drug-disaster-bush-still-doesn%e2%80%99t-get-it
Nov 13, 2006
Medicare Prescription Drug Disaster: Bush Still Doesn’t Get It
by Tula Connell
On Fox News Sunday, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the
federal government does not need to negotiate lower prescription drug
prices for seniors.
Bartlett said that prices have "come down" and drugs already are cheap
enough (watch the video clip at ThinkProgress).
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/12/bartlett-medicare-negotiate-prices/
Funny.
Millions of retired seniors say they went to the polls because they
are extremely dissatisfied with the Medicare prescription drug plan
Bush and his Republican cronies rammed through Congress in 2003.
As the Alliance for Retired Americans noted:
http://www.retiredamericans.org/
Specific defeats of anti-senior incumbents such as [Sen.] Rick
Santorum in Pennsylvania, [Reps.] Nancy Johnson in Connecticut and
Clay Shaw in Florida were a strong rebuke to those who misused their
leadership positions to side with the big drug and insurance companies
instead of their constituents.
Johnson was the author of the badly-flawed Medicare prescription drug
law, and Shaw was a champion of privatizing Social Security.
In these three races, and in many others, retirees sent out-of-touch
politicians straight into retirement.
Not to mention the defeat of Rep. Melissa Hart, whose campaign staff
called the police on seniors when Alliance members stopped by her
office a couple of weeks ago.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/10/29/granny-get-your-gun%e2%80%a6oops-make-that-donuts/
They wanted to express their displeasure over her role in supporting
the Medicare drug plan and the nearly $3,000 seniors have to pay out
of pocket after their drug costs top $2,000.
Edward Coyle, executive director of the Alliance, puts it this way:
Retired Americans were a key part of Tuesday’s historic elections.
In the major House and Senate races across the country, there was a
clear mandate to lower the cost of prescription drugs and better
protect the retirement security of all Americans.
Ever since he admitted in his post-election press conference that
working families "thumped" the GOP, President Bush has made the
obligatory noises about bipartisan cooperation, getting press mileage
out of lunching with Speaker of the House-to-be Nancy Pelosi and
meeting with Senate leaders such as Harry Reid, the likely Senate
majority leader for the 110th Congress.
With reform of the Medicare prescription drug law a key goal of voters
and newly elected Democrats, the Bush administration’s position that
no reform is necessary doesn’t exactly sound like a bipartisan
approach.
But then, look at Bush’s record.
While running for office in 2000, Bush promised to be "a uniter, not a
divider."
But as outgoing senator and moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee pointed
out over the weekend, that promise was a sham.
Meeting with Bush and Vice President Cheney shortly after the 2000
elections, Chafee writes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/opinion/12chafee.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
As we sat in Senator Specter’s cozy hideaway office and discussed the
coming session, I was startled to hear the vice president dismiss
suggestions of compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively
partisan agenda that included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of
international agreements and a muscular, unilateral foreign policy.
Bush bipartisanship?
Will he or won’t he?
We’ll keep you informed in more Bipartisan Watch posts.
________________________________________________________
Seniors, your time has come. Time to shove the Medicare scam up their
right wing asses.
Harry
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