Yesterday the Senate began deliberations on S. 1, the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act.
Expext the debate to last a full two weeks - with final passage just before we leave for the July 4th recess.
After years of false starts, political gamesmanship and dashed hopes, it looks like we're going to see a bill signed into law this year... a magnificent accomplishment for this Republican Congress and for our President.
As you know, I have been working this issue for years - essentially since I first came to the Senate in 1995.
Know that I won't rest until we get this job done... and done right.
Given our narrow majority, any major legislation requires bipartisan support. To get to where we are today took the President's leadership and the good faith commitment of Democrats like Max Baucus and John Breaux.
All the best.
If this bill does anything other than repeal any previous legislation, and disallowing any future, Conservatives have lost.
I already e-mailed the White house about my feelings on this bill...we had better not roll over for a Democrat induced bill that only enlarges government!
Frist is an idiot.
The Dims will NEVER love him, and he has successfully alienated those who *might* have voted GOP in the next election - Conservatives everywhere.
What a coincidence. Two years apart CBS News and ABC News
featured the same elderly woman, in news stories about the need
for a new prescription drug coverage program in Medicare and the
shortcomings of Republican-pushed alternatives, as the poster
victim of high prescription costs.
The MRC's Tim Graham noticed, while working on the Media
Reality Check excerpted in item #4 above, the exploitation of the
very same woman, Eva Baer-Schenkein, by the two networks.
But CBS and ABC didn't agree on her ailment. CBS's Diana Olick
complained in 2001: "President Bush backs a plan that would target
only the poorest and that leaves out middle income patients like
Eva Baer-Schenkein." Baer-Schenkein asserted: "So now I'm not
taking anything at all for my osteoporosis."
Two years later, ABC's Linda Douglass worried about how
"71-year old Eva Baer-Schenkein suffers from hypertension and
other health problems. She cannot afford the cost of her
prescription drugs and is tired of waiting for Congress to help
her."
Full rundowns of the two stories with the very same victim:
-- The Sunday, July 1, 2001 CBS Evening News:
Diana Olick began: "No sooner had the winning gavel sounded on
the Patients' Bill of Rights than Senate Democrats announced they
would charge ahead on comprehensive health care reform when they
return from the holiday recess."
Following a clip of Senator Bob Graham of Florida, Olick
explained: "Last Thursday Democrats introduced a Medicare reform
act which includes unlimited prescription drug benefits for
seniors who have paid their deductibles. President Bush backs a
plan that would target only the poorest and that leaves out middle
income patients like Eva Baer-Schenkein."
Baer-Schenkein: "So now I'm not taking anything at all for my
osteoporosis."
Olick helpfully chipped in: "Because she can't afford the
three and half thousand dollars a year for the drug her doctor
prescribed."
Baer-Schenkein: "When I was given this bill I almost passed
out. The pharmacy was crowded so I felt embarrassed to give it
back."
Olick: "In the last two decades prescription drug prices have
increased 300 percent. Last year Americans spent $116 billion to
get their medications...."
For more on that story, see the July 5, 2001 CyberAlert:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010705.asp#2 -- Fast forward to last week, and ABC featured the whinings
from the very same woman on the June 11, 2003 World News Tonight.
Linda Douglass excitedly relayed: "The President and the
Congress are hurrying now to pass this prescription drug plan.
They do not want to face the voters in this, next year's election
and tell them that they've failed one more time. Seventy-one-year
old Eva Baer-Schenkein suffers from hypertension and other health
problems. She cannot afford the cost of her prescription drugs and
is tired of waiting for Congress to help her."
Eva Baer-Schenkein: "I mean, we're not asking for diamond
rings or cars or furs or anything. We're just asking to have what
we need to keep us alive."
Douglass: "Members of Congress say help is on the way."
Senator John Breaux (D-LA): "It is, I think, an historic
opportunity for the Senate, in a bipartisan fashion, to come
together and produce a product that is something that we can all
be proud of."
Douglass: "Seniors groups say all eyes are now on Washington."
Bill Novelli, AARP: "This could be the year. We're hopeful."
Douglass worried the plan isn't expensive enough: "The Senate
is galloping toward passage of a prescription drug bill, but
Senators voted earlier this year to limit the cost of any plan to
$400 billion over 10 years. So the Senate plan has limits. It
covers half of seniors drug bills up to $3,450 per year, then
there is a gap in coverage to keep the cost of the plan down.
Coverage resumes when drug costs $5,300 a year. Democrats complain
that a third of seniors will still be stuck with big bills..."
For more on coverage of the issue that night:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030612.asp#2 Instead of creating a huge new entitlement which will burden
all of us for generations to come, why don't we just take up a
collection to pay for Eva Baer-Schenkein's prescriptions since,
according to CBS and ABC, she's the only one who really needs
help.
I believe the reasoning is that 75% of Americans want a bill of this type and won't allow themselves to be educated [the excuse].."it is what the People want"..so for votes..hunker down and give it to them. Bush figures he is sure of our vote; so lets steal some votes from the Democrats with the passage of such a bill.