Kerry Faults Bush Over Opposition to Drugs From Canada

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Hitting hard on an issue of deep concern to older voters, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday promised an overhaul of the Medicare prescription drug law, saying President Bush had personally "stood in the way" of importing drugs from Canada, which advocates say would significantly reduce costs.

"George Bush stood right there and said, 'Nope, we're not going to help people to have lower cost drugs in America, we're going to help the big drug companies get a great big windfall,' " Mr. Kerry said.

He said of the president's opposition to legislation to reimport American-made drugs from Canada, passed by the Senate: "I thought these were the people who believed in the marketplace, in fair competition. This isn't fair competition, it's a monopoly, and it's been put in place by George Bush and his friends, and it's costing you a whole bunch of extra money, and it's wrong, it's fundamentally wrong."

Mr. Kerry's focus on the issue came as his campaign began what it called an intense effort to court the elderly, a critical constituency in the election, the day after an independent poll showed that signing the Medicare bill in December had not given the president a lift among older voters. The Kerry campaign handed out plastic pillboxes emblazoned with Mr. Kerry's logo to a white-haired crowd here, and released a chart showing how much more some popular drugs cost in the United States than in Canada.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/politics/campaign/12kerry.html




Survey: Medicare users want changes in drug law

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that nearly twice the number of Medicare beneficiaries have negative views of the new prescription-drug law than have positive views. But, it says, beneficiaries want Congress to fix what they see as problems in the law, not to repeal it.

The survey, issued Tuesday, found that 47 percent of beneficiaries had unfavorable views of the law, while 26 percent had favorable views. The rest said they did not have enough information. A majority said they thought the law would be helpful to most people on Medicare. But only 29 percent thought it would be helpful to them personally.

Eight in 10 said the law should be changed to allow Americans to import lower-cost drugs from Canada and to allow the federal government to negotiate with drug companies to obtain lower prices.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0408110201aug11,1,7234187.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

[MaryH]

1. And today we have a new terror alert - you guessed it -

drugs from Candada (or imported drugs) are one of Osama's targets.

This is just so outrageous!

[Feanorcurufinwe]

2. I missed that one

[MaryH]

3. Co over to CNN - that's where I saw it. Unbelievable

[Feanorcurufinwe]

4. Yup, incredible

"Cues from chatter" gathered around the world are raising concerns that terrorists might try to attack the domestic food and drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs, acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford says.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Crawford said Wednesday that he had been briefed about al-Qaeda plans uncovered during recent arrests and raids, but declined further comment about any possible threats.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/08/12/fda.terror.ap/index.html