Congress challenger takes on prescription drugs
Paul Clinton
Registered nurse and congressional candidate Gerrie Schipske has
been beating the prescription-drug drum on the campaign trail through
a district she hopes to seize from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
Schipske, after a meeting with the Gray Panthers of Long Beach,
said she supports Sen. John McCain’s generic-drug bill that passed in
the Senate last week and wants to provide better drug access to
senior citizens.
“We have to send a message that we won’t let the pharmaceutical
industry block their access to less expensive prescription drugs,”
Schipske said Monday in a statement. “Now is the time to pass real
reform that will provide seniors an equally effective but cheaper
alternative to expensive, name-brand drugs.”
Rohrabacher, who supported a different prescription-drug benefit
bill in a House vote on June 28, said he supports “targeted relief”
for the neediest seniors.
Rohrabacher said he wouldn’t support drug benefits for illegal
immigrants or a broad-based benefit that could endanger a Medicare
system already financially weak in the knees.
Rep. Chris Cox, who represents Newport Beach, also supported the
Medicare Modernization and Prescription Drug Act of 2002, which is
awaiting a vote in the Senate.
“We are extending the prescription-drug benefit,” Rohrabacher said
about the bill. “We’re just not making it available for free.... We
passed a bill that will increase spending [to offer to extend drug
benefits] by hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Schipske, a Democrat, will have an uphill climb defeating
Rohrabacher, who has held his seat in a rock-ribbed Republican
district since 1988. The district, which has been realigned as a
result of the 2000 census, includes Leisure World in Seal Beach and
sections that include pockets of senior voters.
The prescription-drug issue has resonated with many of the seniors
who visit the Costa Mesa Senior Center, Executive Director Aviva
Goelman said. They’ll be paying attention to the opinions of
Rohrabacher and Schipske on this issue, she said.
“Seniors are going to look at it in a big way,” Goelman said. “We
hear some that complain that [drugs are] too expensive, that the
drugs they desperately need they can’t afford.”
Many seniors have had to buy drugs from mail-order catalogs from
Canada or sneak a suitcase full of pills back from a trip south of
the Mexican border, where they’re much cheaper, Goelman said.
Seniors living on fixed incomes are often squeezed by the high
cost of the medicines. Goelman said the prescription drug act would
actually raise the cost of “generic” medicines -- those that are no
longer patented by a drug company -- from a $3 to $10 co-payment.
To get her message out, Schipske began her “Message In a Bottle”
tour in which she urges seniors to give her their empty medicine
bottles to send to Congress with a note that reads, “We need help”
paying for medicines.
Rohrabacher blasted the move as a “clever publicity stunt.”
“I think this district is too educated to fall for that,”
Rohrabacher said. “There are a lot of other issues on people’s
minds.”
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