Patricia Seeley: Denham should help constituents, not drug companies
Re “Ignore the ads; talks can lower drug costs” (Page 1B, April 15): I just returned from my pharmacy. The medicine I have taken for years has gone up four-fold from what I had been paying! Why? I noticed an article in The Modesto Bee written by Dr. C.V. Allen. He mentioned the April 10 full-page ad with Rep. Jeff Denham and an elderly lady proclaiming, “You could lose access to medicines you need.”
Dr. Allen wrote, “The ad thanked Denham for ‘protecting’ Medicare D prescription coverage and urged readers to oppose a bill in congress that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs directly with pharmaceutical companies.” Dr. Allen reported “that such negotiations are a common cost-control method already used by the V.A. and Medicaid...”
If this bill would make it possible for medicare to negotiate costs with drug companies, and lower drug costs, why would Denham be in an ad asking us to oppose it? It seems reasonable that if this bill helps the people on Medicare he would vote for this bill! We see pharmaceutical costs going up and our Congress needs to vote for this bill allowing negotiations to help lower those costs. Denham should represent us, not the company that paid for the ad.
Patricia Seeley, Modesto
This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Patricia Seeley: Denham should help constituents, not drug companies."