Spending More on Medicare Ads Than Cheaper Drugs

The White House today announced it will be spending another $18 million of taxpayer money on television ads promoting its new Medicare bill. Not only was the last round of ads criticized by government regulators as misleading, but the White House is on track to spend more Medicare money on television ads ($80 million) than its own FDA commissioner says is necessary to create a safe system to import cheaper, FDA-approved prescription medicines from abroad ($58 million).

Allowing reimportation could save seniors - and all U.S. consumers - billions. That, of course, means the White House and its allies in the drug industry oppose it. Thus, the White House has not budgeted any money for setting up the reimportation system, and has stripped bipartisan provisions legalizing reimportation out of key bills. Meanwhile, the Administration has taken the extraordinary step of deploying federal agents to search and intimidate low-income seniors traveling to Canada in order to fill their prescriptions. On top of that, Pfizer CEO Henry McKinnell - a top Bush fundraiser - "vowed to continue efforts to cut off supplies" of medicines to Canada in an effort to starve U.S. and Canadian seniors of medicine until they stop their push for a reimportation bill.