Thousands complain about Bush's new prescription drug plan, 
but the White House calls its Part D disaster "a success."

Medicare is on President Bush's agenda today as he heads to upstate New York. 
He'll be at a senior center near Rochester. The visit comes as thousands of Medicare recipients have had 
trouble with the administration's new prescription drug plan. But the White House is calling its Part D disaster 
a success, perhaps because it was written to help big pharmaceutical companies instead of hard-working 
people who need prescription drugs to live.

Thousands of people across the country are paying a price at the pharmacy for this corruption. 
They're getting over-charged and facing outrageous delays, if they're getting their prescriptions at all. 
The president's plan is costly, complicated and confusing.

Specifically, the president's Part D disaster:

prohibits Medicare from negotiating with drug companies to get lower prices for seniors,
denies coverage to millions of seniors who will still pay monthly premiums this fall and
allows big insurance companies to take drugs off their coverage list during the year when
   patients are locked in and can't change their plans.

The Republican prescription drug plan "will cost New York taxpayers $52.7 billion over the next ten years" 
and "deliberately includes waste and inefficiency," according to a new report released today by the Campaign
for America's Future. (The report is available at http://www.ourfuture.org/drugplan_cost_NY.cfm.)

The simplest way to reduce the cost of prescription drugs would've been to require Medicare to negotiate 
lower prices from drug companies like the Veteran's Adminstration does for veterans and by allowing seniors 
to choose their drug plan directly from Medicare, instead of from a private insurance company.

A separate report released by the Campaign for America's Future last month shows that specific provisions 
of the Medicare prescription drug program inserted at the request of pharmaceutical and HMO interests will 
cost taxpayers and seniors more than $80 billion a year. The study connects the program’s escalating costs 
and complexity to the influence exerted by lobbyists for health insurance, health services and pharmaceutical 
companies in drafting the bill. According to the report, industry campaign contributions totaled $96 million 
from 2000 to 2004, and industry profits will swell by 500 to 600 percent as the new legislation goes into effect.

Toby Chaudhuri
Communications Director
Campaign for America’s Future
202-955-5665 x153
978-884-8626