Certain Democrats are stepping up their efforts to criticize the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, even though many of them proposed and even voted for legislation with many of the same elements as in the new law. Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Committee on Finance,
today commented on the latest attacks and released state-by-state enrollment numbers showing voluntary enrollment is up.
“The Senate’s Democratic leader was on the Senate floor today to criticize the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Meanwhile, voluntary enrollment in the new benefit is up nationwide.
Enrollment in the stand-alone plans is the best way we have to gauge voluntary enrollment. Millions of Medicare beneficiaries had zero prescription drug coverage before and now they have it. I wonder if the Democratic leader really thinks seniors would be better off with the nothing, zero, zilch they had before. Remember, as of only a few months ago, many of our nation’s seniors were cutting pills in half or skipping their medicine in the first place. I can’t imagine anyone wants to return to that sorry state of affairs."
Following is a new analysis of voluntary enrollment figures for each state from Chairman Grassley’s Finance Committee staff.
Source: Ranking Member’s News
