Stuck In The "Doughnut Hole"

As reported in the Bucks County Courier Times, Patrick Murphy held a press conference in front of the BJ’s Wholesale outlet in Falls Township, PA yesterday with a lady named Charlotte McClellan who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Ms. McClellan was receiving her meds covered under Medicare Part D, but that is about to change since she has reached what is called the “doughnut hole,” which means a gap in coverage for her medications as part of the Medicare Part D fiasco foisted on us by the Repug congress.

(I don’t have a link to this at the moment, but I’ll put one up as soon as it becomes available; the paper used to be atrocious about that, but they’ve done a good job with it recently.)

Patrick noted that, although Mikey wasn’t in Congress at the time this disgusting farce of a bill was passed, he hasn’t done anything to fix the problem either. Mikey responded in the paper today that “he has fought the Bush administration to repair problems in the program.”

I’ll tell you what; here is a link to the “Mike On The Issues” page from his campaign web site, specifically his health care page. Do a search on the page for the phrase “part D” and let me know if you find anything, OK, because I didn’t.

Oh, and I love the quote from Mikey near the end of the story that he would “consider supporting” negotiations to buy drugs in bulk as Patrick proposed months ago but only “if it would lead to lower cost and better service for Medicare beneficiaries.”

Does it sound like Mikey is being dragged kicking and screaming into this position to you also?

This link takes you to a story of a woman in Arkansas suffering from a plight somewhat similar to that of Ms. McClellan, and this takes you to a backgrounder piece on this mess from Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman of New Jersey.

Also, in response to Mikey’s tepid endorsement, I’d like to highlight this quote from the Arkansas News story:

(Congressman Marion Berry) said he doubts the Republican leadership in Congress will allow a vote on his bill, HR 752 (co-sponsored with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill to try and fix the “doughnut hole”) this year. However, he said the bill will be a priority if Democrats win control of Congress in November.

And you can bet that Patrick would be part of that fight also.