A Victim of Taxpayer Generosity and Life-saving Drug Companies

Recently a woman wrote a letter about Medicare Part D that appeared in the Asbury Park Press. She calls the new prescription drug benefit a scam, an injustice, anit-senior and a giveaway to the drug companies. In other words, she’s been convinced by nonstop political demagoguery that she is a victim.

Her prescriptions would have cost her $880.16 each month or $10,562 annually, if not for the Medicare plan she chose which includes “doughnut hole” coverage for all “generic and brand name” drugs. Her total annual cost will be $1,620 with her $135 month Medicare Part D premium. She’s been convinced her $8,942 savings on life-saving or enhancing drugs is some sort of scam. Doubtful it has ever entered her mind that it is the American taxpayer who pays the difference.

She writes that pharmaceutical companies are “dragging down the individuals much as they did in the Gilded Age”. It apparently never crossed her mind that stockholders own the drug companies and that means average working Americans, pension funds and retirees – Rockefeller (D-WV) sits in the U.S. Senate. Men and women, a large share working right here in New Jersey, make their living by bringing her those drugs upon which she depends. But she’s been convinced these people are greedy. Doubtful it has ever entered her mind where she would be without pharmaceutical company stockholders and employees.