Medicare and Prescription Drugs
Advocating Meaningful Reform

Contribute to Help Peter Fight for Medicare Reform

Our senior citizens deserve affordable health care and medications. They rely on Medicare, and they need a real prescription drug benefit. But the recent Republican Medicare “reform” legislation provides only a band-aid for a system that needs major surgery to combat soaring costs. That’s why I want to take my fight for improving Medicare to the United States Senate.

I remain dedicated to implementing a benefit plan that provides broad-based access to prescription drugs and is comprehensive, affordable, and safe. The Republican plan largely ignores these goals. Despite its huge cost - over half a trillion dollars and counting - the new Medicare bill provides only modest help for seniors while enriching drug companies and private insurance companies with huge government subsidies and an untested plan to sell drug policies to seniors who can’t afford them.

Congress will return to the many challenges of the high cost of prescription drugs in the years ahead as the inadequacy of the current law becomes apparent. We can do better - and as your Senator, I will make sure we do. We can start by carefully expanding the market place for buying prescription drugs. In the Senate, I will continue to press for legislation I have authored to address some of those inadequacies by allowing the Department of Health and Human Services to use its immense purchasing power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for federal programs. I will also support efforts to expand access to Internet pharmacies so seniors can benefit from the lowest prices available from thousands of providers. But we should expand access only if we are sure that the drugs we import are safe and properly regulated. Restricting drugs imported from Canada in particular makes no sense and serves only to increase the cost of drugs to people who can least afford them.

As your Senator, I’ll fight the administration’s ban on drug imports and push for legislation to require the FDA to certify drugs from approved industrialized countries as safe. No older Floridian should have to choose between buying drugs from suspicious countries and hoping they aren’t dangerous - or going without their drugs altogether. Not just Medicare recipients but also every other American who takes a prescription medication should be confident in the safety of their prescriptions. We must demand more from the FDA to protect us and ensure that we are getting the best and safest drugs for our money.

In July of 2003, I introduced legislation calling for tougher national standards and penalties for individuals or companies who adulterate pharmaceuticals. The Prescription Drug Tampering Prevention Act of 2003 creates much stricter penalties and fines protecting the public from criminals who contaminate and dilute prescription drugs. In light of the recent revelations in Florida of counterfeited prescription drugs for cancer and AIDS patients, I proposed to increase the penalty to life in prison for drug adulteration that leads to injury or death.

For me, the bottom line is this - we are not getting what we pay for when it comes to health care for seniors. As your Senator, I’ll fight to make sure we do.