Madrid and Edwards Talk Healthcare

From Suzanne Prescott:

Albuquerque, March 2, 2006: Congressional Candidate Patricia Madrid and Senator John Edwards were hosted by the Alamosa Community Center and First Choice Health Care at a meeting yesterday.  Madrid and Edwards met with health care providers and clients to talk about the health care challenges they face, particularly with regard to the failings of the Medicare prescription drug program. Madrid reported that both providers and seniors repeated an increasingly heard message, "the program is broken and it doesn't work." She added, "It only works for insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies."

The frequent complaints from seniors stand in sharp contrast to what Congresswoman Heather Wilson and President Bush say, which is that the program is working. Wilson claims that a majority of seniors have coverage because of this program. Madrid pointed out that the number is misleading. The fact is that only 23% of New Mexican seniors who can voluntarily sign up have signed up -- a large discrepancy from the claim made by Wilson that 70% have signed up. The reason that the number is misleading is that it includes many seniors who have been involuntarily signed up by the program. Madrid explained that 149,689 seniors had been involuntarily dumped into the new program from Medicaid or other programs under which they already had coverage.

According to the US Dept. of Health & Human Services there are 106,853 New Mexicans eligible to voluntarily enroll in the new plan. To date only 24,712 of those who can voluntarily sign up have done so. That means that only 23% have signed up -- a far cry from the Wilson claim that over 70% have signed up. According to Madrid this discrepancy is intended to hide the failure of the drug program from view.

Madrid is insistent that the Medicare drug plan needs a complete overhaul. Madrid says, "At best it (the plan) is inept and confusing and at worst it is corrupt."  Madrid offers a new plan which will fix the problems of the failed Wilson Bush plan.  Madrid's plan calls for

• extending the enrollment deadline beyond the current May 15 date and/or eliminating the penalty which seniors will experience if they do not enroll by May 15.
• simplifying the plan so that there are not 48 different plans to have to evaluate and choose from
• eliminating the requirement that seniors have to join an HMO or leave their long time personal doctors in order to get the drug plan of their choice
• closing the coverage gap, now called the donut-hole (which might more aptly be called a 'sink hole')
• allowing state and federal governments to negotiate the purchase of drugs in bulk just as the VA already does

Madrid states that her plan "provides more coverage to more people at better value." Madrid added "Misleading statistics won't fool New Mexicans. They know that the Medicare prescription drug program is not working and they're ready for a change."

Senator Edwards, former Kerry running mate in 2004, reinforced Madrid's message and reported that the clients and patients at First Choice very strongly described the problems they had experienced with the Wilson Bush plan. He added that as a candidate for New Mexico's first congressional district, Madrid is a woman of "strength, conscience and vision who knows where America needs to go and she'll make sure that the folks we just met with will have a real advocate in Washington." Edwards condemned the Medicare plan saying, "The people who are going to get hurt the worst by that maze are people who struggle the most, people who are less educated, and people who are poor and they’re the ones who are most vulnerable to this system which could just eat them alive." 

Edwards further explained how the Medicare drug legislation was passed.  Drug company lobbyists who were paid millions and millions of dollars were all over Capitol Hill during the time the Medicare bill was being debated. The drug companies, according to Edwards, got everything they wanted from Bush and Cheney, everything they wanted from the Republican leadership in Congress. The lobbyists effectively stopped the importation of drugs from Canada, stopped the government from using its bulk buying power (forcing tax payers to buy drugs at highly inflated prices). “This is insane, that we let drug companies charge whatever they want and our government can't even negotiate the best price. This is a situation where it was clear what was right and what was wrong."

In Madrid's closing remarks she pointed out that in order to pass a new Medicare law, Democrats will need to take approximately 15 seats in Congress from across the country. A Congress of like-minded legislators who intend to repair the crippled drug program can create and pass a Medicare program that responds to the needs of citizens and not just the pharmaceutical companies.