If you or anyone you know has to make a choice between buying medicine or pay other important expenses, you'll want to follow this story. Have you found ways to cut your pharmacy costs? After you read this article, share with your ideas with fellow readers.
Congress will take up akey issue next week that can benefit the 43 million people enrolled in Medicare, and AARP is putting the full force of its nearly 38 million members behind efforts to pass H.R. 4, the "Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act."
"Drug prices are too high," AARP CEO Bill Novelli said. "We believe in giving the HHS this important step to lower prescription drug prices. Our members have been visiting, writing and calling Congress urging support of H.R. 4, and our national ads beginning this weekend say-'It's time for Congress to give Medicare the bargaining power it needs.'"
Under current law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is prohibited from using the full bargaining power of 43 million Medicare beneficiaries to help bring down prescription drug prices. H.R. 4 would remove the prohibition and direct the Secretary to commence such negotiations. "We need to do everything we can to hold down drug prices," said Novelli. According to AARP's 3rd Quarter 2006 Watchdog Report, manufacturer prescription drug prices for brand name drugs rose 6.2 percent in the last 12-month period, outpacing the rate of general inflation, which rose 3.7 percent.
According to exit polls, roughly 1 out of every 4 voters in the November elections was a member of AARP. Nine out of 10 AARP members acrossall political affiliations support allowing Medicare to bargain for lower prescription drug prices.
AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization that helps people 50+ have independence, choice and control in ways that are beneficial and affordable to them and society as a whole.
For more information go to http://www.AARP.org.
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