Ciro & Carolina Rodriguez at Campaign Office on DeZavala Road Open House
Immediate Release
Bonilla – Hazardous to Your Health Care
Bonilla Record Puts Pharmaceutical Industry Ahead of the People
San Antonio – Bonilla’s record of support for the pharmaceutical industry over the people of Texas poses a danger to the health care of our most vulnerable.
Henry Bonilla was a strong supporter of the Republican Medicare Drug Plan which has built-in cost-raising provisions that have left many of the nation’s seniors unable to afford vital prescription drugs.
Bonilla was again the deciding vote on a bill that harms Texans when he voted for a bill that forces seniors into HMO’s, has no limits on premiums, and contains a massive gap in coverage, now commonly referred to as the “doughnut hole.”
“Our seniors already have a hard enough time making ends meet,” said Ciro D. Rodriguez. “Why would you put such a vital necessity out of their financial reach? We have seniors across the country who are deciding between buying food and their medications, or who have now resorted to cutting their pills in half to try and stretch their prescriptions.”
Bonilla has received plenty in rewards from the pharmaceutical industry for putting them first, to the tune of $278,000. In 2006 alone, Bonilla received $37,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, including checks from Pfizer, Inc., Merck & Co. Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Ely Lilly.
At the same time Bonilla was cashing campaign checks, he was voting to cut $39.7 billion from Medicaid and Medicare. In 2005 Bonilla voted for mandatory cuts of funding for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $6.9 billion, but did not cut the $5.4 billion HMO slush fund.
What Bonilla has done to retirees and seniors is sad and depicable. But he's not the only one responsible for this travesty of justice. The AARP "leadership" deceived its membership and supported the Republican drug prescription plan for seniors. My protest was to let my membership in AARP lapse. (Fortunately, I have a creditable prescription plan, which I pay for, that is better than Medicare Part D.)
ReplyDeleteWhat has Bonilla done for poor and moderate income seniors? He supported the so-called "Death Tax,"
which lets the heirs of wealthy parents keep all the money their parents earned, and helps perpetuate the gap between the rich and the poor and middle class!
Yeah! As far as all but the wealthiest seniors are concerned, Bonilla would like them all die off, the sooner the better, so that Republicans in Congress can spend more of the Social Security Trust Fund on tax cuts for the rich!