Real scare tactics

Surely Democrats don’t use scare tactics, do they? Of course. There’s no greater example of scare tactics in action than the way Democrats everywhere have fought against the new prescription drug bill Republicans passed and the President signed.

You remember what happened? Democrats obfuscated seniors, telling them things like:

"The prescription drug benefit is very complicated and there's no effort in this bill to reduce drug costs for seniors or anyone else. Their biggest concern and mine is [that] it's going to force seniors out of Medicare and into HMOs. I think that will be disastrous for seniors and Medicare." – Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

"Let us not reverse the historic decision our country made in 1965. Let us not turn our back on our senior citizens so that insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies can earn even higher profits." – Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

"We could be doing a lot more with the money than providing big handouts to HMOs and the drug companies and to a lot of special interests. A big chunk of this money is not going to go to senior citizens, it's going to be bailouts to big business. … That means seniors are going to pay more." – Sen. Tom Daschle, D-Mass.

Seeing that Republicans accomplished a major Medicare reform in three years when Democrats couldn’t get anything done on the matter from the mid-1960s until the mid-1990s, they chose to debase the Republican plan. They’re main tactic: scare seniors into thinking they’ll loose coverage by switching to the Gov’t plan. Furthermore, make the seniors mad by making vague allegations of collusion between the GOP and pharmaceutical companies, all the while insisting no senior could benefit from the program.

Did it work? Yes and no. They couldn’t succeed in stopping the legislation, which became law around New Year’s. But the Democrats succeeded too. Seniors were so frightened of the plan, hardly any signed up. According to National Journal, in the first two months of the program, only 1.7 million people signed up on his own. A few million more were signed up automatically, while a big number of seniors didn’t sign up.

Why would seniors forfeit thousands of dollars in prescription drug savings? National Journal asked the same question. The public policy magazine found six seniors who had been reluctant to join the program. After a bit of time on Medicare’s 800-number and the website, NJ found five-of-six reluctant seniors would save money – some would save astonishing amounts. Here’s one:

Wayne Richards
Annual Income: $5,000
2003 Rx costs at list price: $2,210
What he actually paid: $1,548
What he could pay annually with the card: Approximately $100

From the article:

Wayne Richards, a 78-year-old Dayton, Ohio, resident, fits the "elated" category. Last year, he paid $1,548 for eight prescription drugs on an income of $5,000. This year, with a discount card, he’s likely to pay less than $100. "This is terrific," Richards said in an interview. "I got Lipitor for nothing. I near-about flipped."

Baltimore resident Ellie Tickner, however, doesn’t share Richards’s enthusiasm. The irate senior says she has no idea whether a discount card would save her money and isn’t going to find out. "I was tempted to call up, but then I saw a big article in the paper that the cards are not what they’re supposed to be," she roared in the recent telephone interview, before slamming the phone down in fury.

I’m not making this up. If you want the article, email me and I’ll send it to you. Democrats poisoned the water to such an extent, seniors won’t even see if they can save with the prescription card. Here’s another example:

Frank and Gladys Cannon could save more than $5,000 with the card. Currently, they pay face value for all their drugs (no generics), totaling more than $10,000 every year. From the NJ:

Despite their long list of expensive drugs, Gladys and Frank Cannon have decided not to look into the discount cards. They’ve just heard too many bad things from their friends about the cards, they say. "I just don’t like the card," said 77-year-old Gladys, who lives with her husband, 78, in West Covina, Calif. "They’re all for the benefit of the drug companies. We would get so little out of it. It’s not worth the trouble of getting it."

So little out of it? It would cut their costs by more than half! This is insanity!

Unlike Cheney’s comments, this kind of scare tactic brings consequences. Millions of seniors are spending significantly more on prescription drugs than necessary. Real consequences for real people.