An active retirement-Older Americans make a formidable voting bloc

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http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-et-ordona11aug11,1,6258840.storyCULTURE
An active retirement
Older Americans make a formidable voting bloc, and as healthcare issues and the war make headlines, more are politicized, some say.
Aug 11, 2004 By Michael Ordoña, Times Staff Writer



They're older, they're wiser, they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.

"Look at the drug ads targeting seniors; they're trying to keep them afraid," says Natalie Ambrose, 74, a retired schoolteacher and current member of the Los Angeles County Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council, a nonpartisan activist organization. "They're really aimed at the children of seniors; they're selling to the caregivers. It's another way of taking away our independence."

About a dozen of Ambrose's colleagues will be in a select contingent to hit the rails later this month to protest the Bush administration's prescription drug law in one of many examples of senior citizens' activism.

The "Canadian Rx Express" is a train ride to Vancouver to pick up three-month supplies of prescription drugs to dramatize the irony of having to go to Canada to buy U.S.-made drugs at discount prices. The new law prohibits Medicare from negotiating bulk rates, so acquiring American drugs from Canada is significantly cheaper than buying them in America.<snip>