Sample Letter to the Editor on Medicare

Copy the text below and let your local media source know that Al Gore’s Empty Promises Aren’t the Prescription America’s Seniors Need.

To the Editor:

It should be no surprise Medicare and prescription drugs have become a focal point of debate in this presidential election. For eight years seniors have waited for leadership from Al Gore and Bill Clinton to solve America’s Medicare and prescription drug crisis. The White House has not led and worse the administration walked away from bipartisan efforts to strengthen Medicare and provide prescription drug coverage options for seniors. Seniors under Vice President Gore’s plan will pay more in additional premiums and 50% co-payments for less prescription drug coverage. Each month, those additional premiums, which will grow to at least $50 per month, will be taken out of seniors’ Social Security checks, and seniors will still have to pay out-of-pocket when they pick up their prescription medicines. Also, Al Gore’s plan is an unprecedented attempt to have government bureaucrats set the price on drugs and will limit access to medicines and handicap pharmaceutical innovation. Finally, Mr. Gore’s plan will leave a broken, wasteful and bureaucratic system in place, rather than strengthen Medicare.

Mr. Gore has had eight years to address the nation’s Medicare and prescription drug problem and has done nothing. Yet only in an election year has his campaign decided to broach the issues when in fact they had their opportunity throughout his tenure in office. Gore and Clinton have played politics with Medicare, first creating a bipartisan commission to study Medicare, and then rejecting that commission’s solution—a solution based on the same plan that federal employees, including Vice President Gore and Congress have, and which included prescription drug coverage. Al Gore may think he has a good issue, but he sure doesn’t have a good plan. Vice President Gore’s empty promises are not the prescription our seniors need. We need fundamental Medicare reform, with more choices and competition.

Sincerely,