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.”