This thing is supposed to help seniors? First come the accusations that it'll cost an additional $100 million and that an analyst was threatened with losing his job if he told Congress, and now this:
" The law provides limited prescription-drug coverage for about 40 million seniors. It also makes it easier for cheaper generic drugs to reach the marketplace.
The law's centerpiece is the drug benefit, which will not be available until 2006. Until then, seniors would get drug-discount cards that could net savings of 10 percent to 25 percent off market prices.
Under the full drug benefit, seniors would pay a $250 deductible, a $34 monthly premium and 25 percent of the cost of drugs between $250 and $2,250. Seniors would encounter a gap in coverage after $2250 until their out-of-pocket expenses reaches $3,600 or $5,100 in total drug expenses. At that point, they'd pay only 5 percent of their additional drug costs."
This is, of course, in addition to charges that Republicans attempted to bribe members of Congress to get their support, and reports that the vote in the Senate was held open for three hours, rather than the normal fifteen minutes so Republican leaders could find more votes.
Didn't politicians used to keep this sort fo thing from being quite so obvious?
Posted by Chris at March 24, 2004 11:37 AM