An Effort to Win Votes

Rep. Andy Harris has been sending strong messages that he wants to save Medicare. First the mailer, followed by an award. He complained about problems that still need to be solved, but didn’t give us a hint of what he has done for Medicare in the past, or what he proposes to do to save it.

All we have is his voting record.  Although no reasonable alternative has been offered, he voted to simply repeal the Affordable Care Act rather than move forward and make the alterations generally expected in any effort of this magnitude. Among other things, we’d lose coverage for checkups and cancer screenings, and the donut hole would reappear, costing us $5,000 annually.

He voted for Paul Ryan’s budget. Throwing us back into to the private insurance market would likely double, even quadruple, our insurance premiums, if we were fortunate enough to be able to get insurance. Medicaid and nursing home benefits would be slashed. That would save Medicare – for the wealthy.

As for that conveniently timed award he received, check out RetireSafe, the presenting organization. This “nonpartisan” organization, which was founded by the conservative Council for Government Reform, has close ties to lobbyists that support big pharma’s efforts to prevent out-of-patent medications from being distributed as less costly generics.

What, exactly, is Andy proposing? The only thing that’s clear so far is that he’s making an effort to get our votes.