Drugmakers Offer $80 Billion to Cut Costs for Elderly (Update1)
By Nicholas Johnston
June 20 (
Bloomberg) -- Drugmakers have offered to spend $80 billion over 10 years to help elderly Americans afford medicines and lower the cost of a proposed overhaul of the health-care system, U.S. Senator Max Baucus said today.
An agreement reached between Baucus and the drugmakers, with the participation of the Obama administration, narrows the so-called “doughnut hole” in Medicare’s prescription-drug program that raises costs for many seniors.
“This deal will provide significant relief from that burden for millions of American seniors,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “We are at a turning point in America’s journey toward health care reform.”
Congressional Democrats have been working on draft legislation to fulfill one of Obama’s top campaign promises: expanding health-care coverage and lowering the cost of a system that makes up 17 percent of the economy.
Republicans this past week questioned the price tag of an overhaul when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a version of the plan being considered by Baucus’s panel would cost at least $1.6 trillion.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business group, began a campaign against the plan, criticizing provisions being proposed, including a mandate on employers to provide health insurance to their workers. .........(more)
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