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Current | In the Spotlight Archives What Bush says vs. the Facts About His Medicare Drug PlanBy Roger Hickey Campaign for America's Future Bush says: We want to help seniors with drug costs. The Facts: The Bush drug plan puts special interests over seniors. President Bush claims his new legislation will provide a good prescription drug benefit to seniors. But the Campaign for America's Future and a large coalition of senior, labor and civic groups have joined to make the case that the new drug deal gives windfall profits to the drug and insurance industry and provides tax breaks for the rich - without giving a reliable prescription drug benefit or drug price relief to seniors and people with disabilities. President Bush used his January 20 State of the Union speech to begin a campaign to convince Americans that he is providing "seniors the modern medicine they deserve." Polls show Americans are skeptical, and their suspicions are well-founded. This primer contrasts Bush's statements about his Medicare deal, with the facts of the matter. It was written by CAF co-director Roger Hickey - organizer of a major citizen coalition which is campaigning to demand that Congress replace the Bush-drug industry plan with a comprehensive prescription drug program that will reduce drug costs for all seniors. Bush says: This Administration came into office promising a prescription drug benefit for seniors, and we kept that promise. The Facts: For years Republicans opposed a prescription drug benefit. But activist senior citizen organizations, like the Alliance for Retired Americans, organized and pressured politicians, conducting highly-publicized bus trips to Canada and Mexico to buy American-made drugs at lower prices than they could get here. Democratic politicians took up the cause. And one highly visible political upset - Debbie Stabenow's defeat of Spencer Abraham sent a message to Republicans that they couldn't stand in the way of progress forever. The pharmaceutical industry also opposed a government program to buy drugs for seniors, but when George W. Bush decided to neutralize the issue by promising a prescription drug plan, the drug companies quickly got into the business of designing a drug bill for seniors that they could live with. Their enormous political contributions to Bush and his party gave them easy access to the White House and Congressional drafting sessions. [See Public Campaign's new report, "BUYING A LAW: Big Pharma's Big Money and the Bush Medicare Plan" http://www.pcactionfund.org/buyingalaw/.] HMO companies, having failed miserably in their efforts to take over senior health care in the Medicare Plus experiment, decided a Bush drug plan was an opportunity to get government subsidies to play again in Medicare through the new drug program. Get the whole story breaking down Bush's rhetoric from reality here: http://www.ourfuture.org/issues_and_campaigns/medicare/index.cfm Read the Fact Sheet (PDF) |
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