Bob Dold Gets Big Pharma Front Group to "Thank" Him for Protecting Medicare (which he didn't do)

Just a warning. If you click around the Internet political sites, you're going to see ads thanking Bob Dold for protecting Medicare. The ads are sponsored by a group called the 60 Plus Association. The group claims to be a non-partisan senior citizen advocacy group. The truth is that it's a front group for big pharma with ties to the national GOP. It's funded by "PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), CBM (Citizens for Better Medicare) and three drug companies (Merck, Pfizer and Wyeth-Ayerst) plus another $300,000 from Hanwha International Corp., the U.S. subsidiary of a Korean conglomerate with chemical and pharmaceutical interests," and works with Bonner & Associates a firm, "which specializes in astroturf lobbying." See the links from Sourcewatch.

The 60 Plus Association worked against health care reform and against the Clinton prescription drug benefit that failed and eventually caused republicans to sponsor the failing Medicare D, failing because it enriches pharmaceutical companies, but doesn't save seniors a dime. I wrote about this several days ago prompted by my father looking through his and my mom's Medicare D payments and prescription bills. Dad concluded that they didn't save a dime. He's currently not on a Medicare D plan.

The vote for which they're "thanking" (more like advertising) Dold is the budget vote. Dold voted for Paul Ryan's idea of Medicare, turning the program into a voucher program so senior citizens are given some money to spend it on health care in the private market.
One major reason for the Medicare program, in addition to making health care accessible to seniors, was to keep them out of the insurance pools that cover everyone else to keep the price down. Flooding seniors into the pools and private market is going to push premiums up because they are more likely to require more and more expensive medical services.

Who should be thanking Bob Dold? Not seniors and not the rest of us as future seniors. It's insurance companies that want to give Dold that big hug. Insurance companies will make a fortune on the taxpayers dollar given out in vouchers For all that money, seniors will not get the good coverage they now have under Medicare because the government will never pay what it's going to cost.

So,  not only would any logical senior not thank Dold for his vote to kill Medicare in favor of a voucher program, you shouldn't thank him either because it's going to raise your insurance premiums too. It's called supply and demand and with all their talk about it you'd think republicans would understand it by now.

It's a shame Bob Dold is going down the same path as Mark Kirk did, taking (purchasing) fake thanks from fake groups that lie about who they represent, who they want to help and what they intend to promote.