Statement By 60 Plus President Jim Martin
Statement by 60 Plus Association President Jim Martin at a counter rally to an event organized on Capitol Hill by MoveOn.org. Martin criticized the group while praising the long overdue prescription drug benefit.
“There’s an old saying that a lie can travel half way around the world before the truth can get its shoes on. Well the truth has now arrived.
I’m passing out a summary of a survey that shows seniors are strongly supportive of the new prescription drug benefit. To quote from the summary, ‘The new program is clearly working for many seniors, who are meeting the challenges of signing-up for the plan and saving money on the drugs they need. Once the initial problems were worked out, this survey suggests that most seniors will eventually come to like and appreciate the new drug benefit.’
Shame on these liberal scallywags and scoundrels for scaring seniors with the big lie technique. The truth is that when Medicare passed 40 years ago, it did so with bi-partisan support. Purposed by Democrats who were in charge back then, it won support from Republicans. How do I know? I worked on Capitol Hill for a Republican that voted for it, Senator Edward J. Gurney of Florida.
Forty years later, with Republicans now in charge, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit was proposed by Republicans and received support from Democrats. It’s time to stop scaring seniors. The largest seniors group of all, formally known as the American Association of Retired Persons, now legally known as the AARP, also strongly supported this long overdue prescription drug benefit.
To the argument that the program was off by billions of dollars in cost, I recall in 1965 about the same time that President Lyndon B. Johnson was flying to Independence, Missouri to present the first Medicare card to former president Harry S Truman, that the program was going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a few billion dollars, but that figure skyrocketed to about 8 or 9 times as large. So the economist’s were off then as now.
Again, let’s stop the demagoguery and help seniors, especially low income seniors, get signed up for this long overdue and badly needed prescription drug benefit before the May 15th deadline. Stop using seniors as political footballs.”
-30-
