THE MEDICARE DRUG PROPOSAL:
A $118 million-a-day tax increase

August 14, 2003

Question:

Are you willing to have federal tax requirements increase by $118 million a day?

The Congressional Budget Office reports that the Senate Medicare bill will cost $432 billion. That's $42 billion more than they claimed just a month ago. The predictions are going UP, UP, and UP as time goes by! It could be billions more by next month.

Let's be clear: $432 billion over ten years is $43.2 billion a year, or $3.6 billion a month, or $118 million a day!

And don't forget that even without prescription coverage, Medicare is headed for bankruptcy in 23 years--unless taxes are raised, eligibility is lowered, coverage is cut, or real reforms are made that bring patients into the cost control equation.

Then there's the very real possibility that drug coverage by the government will mean drug control by the government: Bureaucrats deciding what drugs patients can have!

Action to Take:

Contact your member of Congress to provide them with YOUR opinion on the plan to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare--and at least $432 billion to federal tax requirements on citizens over the next ten years.

Decisions are being made now. The President says he wants a Medicare bill. Call with your opinion.

Contact information for Congress and ideas for a better Medicare plan can be found here.

Read "Medicare Malady #22: Dude, Where's My $400 Billion?" from the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. This is the 22nd in a series of daily commentaries describing critical concerns with the Medicare drug coverage proposal.

Is your member of Congress listening?

Twila Brase RN
President

CCHC is an independent non-profit free-market health care policy organization located in St. Paul, Minnesota