Politics & Voting Return
SENIORS TO WHITE HOUSE:
Group Urges President to Support Bipartisan Medicare Reform
January 24th, 2000: Today The Seniors Coalition, representing millions of senior citizens and their families nationwide, said that the Clinton Administration should put politics aside and work to enact bipartisan legislation to secure health care coverage that includes prescription drug benefits. The Seniors Coalition said that the Administration’s current proposal to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare would inflict a painful, big government "solution" on older Americans. More government is not the answer to seniors’ needs for prescription drug coverage. What seniors need is the same kind of good private coverage White House staff and Members of Congress enjoy. The Administration should not force second-rate coverage on our nation’s seniors. Recent surveys show that over 80 percent of senior citizens with prescription drug coverage would prefer to keep what they have rather than choose the White House plan. Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would create incentives to expand private health care coverage with prescription drug benefits. Reforming Medicare should not involve threatening the benefits of millions of seniors. While there’s no question that we support efforts to provide coverage for those in need, we strongly oppose efforts that would force seniors into a government-run plan, provide a lower benefit than many now receive through private health plans and cost billions of dollars. The White House "prescription" for a new Medicare drug benefit would put the federal government in charge of operating the new program. This White House tried to impose a broad, federal solution for health care six years ago. What we have now is clear-cut choice between a bipartisan plan to expand private sector health care coverage and HillaryCare II. The American people rejected big government health care before, and they will do it again.