Grassley: Partisan Attackers Seem to Prefer Old Days With No Medicare Drug Benefit

M E M O R A N D U M

To: Reporters and Editors
Re: More partisan attacks on Medicare drug benefit
Da: Monday, Feb. 27, 2006

Certain Democrats are stepping up their efforts to criticize the new Medicare prescription
drug benefit, even though many of them proposed and even voted for legislation with many of the
same elements as in the new law. Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Committee on Finance,
today commented on the latest attacks and released state-by-state enrollment numbers showing
voluntary enrollment is up.

“The Senate’s Democratic leader was on the Senate floor today to criticize the Medicare
prescription drug benefit. Meanwhile, voluntary enrollment in the new benefit is up nationwide.
Enrollment in the stand-alone plans is the best way we have to gauge voluntary enrollment. Millions
of Medicare beneficiaries had zero prescription drug coverage before and now they have it. I wonder
if the Democratic leader really thinks seniors would be better off with the nothing, zero, zilch they
had before. Remember, as of only a few months ago, many of our nation’s seniors were cutting pills
in half or skipping their medicine in the first place. I can’t imagine anyone wants to return to that
sorry state of affairs.”

Following is a new analysis of voluntary enrollment figures for each state from Chairman
Grassley’s Finance Committee staff.

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