New Survey of Seniors Finds Confusion about Medicare Law,

Successful Special Interest Lobbying by Pharmaceutical Companies

Today the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health released a survey concerning seniors’ knowledge of, confusion about, and attitudes toward the new Medicare drug program. Enrollment for that program begins on November 15, and the program will be implemented on January 1. The following is the statement of Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, about the survey:

“The Kaiser-Harvard survey underscores the fundamental flaws in the new Medicare legislation—flaws that resulted from the drug companies’ successful lobbying of Congress and the White House.

“Those flaws are producing bewilderment and confusion among seniors and will also result in a far most costly program for America’s seniors and taxpayers.

“The drug lobby’s top priority was to ensure that there would be no meaningful effort to bring down skyrocketing drug prices.

“To achieve this, the drug lobby secured two important concessions: 1) a prohibition that explicitly prevents Medicare from bargaining for cheaper prices; and 2) a requirement that the program be implemented by numerous private plans, not the public Medicare program, since none of these private plans would have the bargaining clout to secure meaningful price reductions.

“To ensure that the Medicare program functions in a cost-effective and understandable manner for America’s seniors, it is time to change these fundamental flaws in the new drug benefit.”

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Families USA is the national organization for health care consumers. It is nonprofit and nonpartisan and advocates for high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

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202-628-3030 · Email: info@familiesusa.org · www.familiesusa.org